INTRODUCTION
In liberal political theory, the state exists to promote the welfare of its citizens and protect their lives and property. It is only in doing these things that it earns the loyalty of its citizens, and exact compliance without recourse to force. Therefore, at a time of dwindling natural resources and unwanted population growth in the 21st Century, the responsibilities of a state or government in modern time have grown so enormous that it has to embark on conscious planning, decisions and policies for either short or long term period in order to ensure the welfare and wellbeing of its citizenry. Hence, Government has the responsibility of mobilizing human and natural resources of the State and determines who gets what, how and when. This explains why government today, is saddled with the tasks of planning, policy making, budgeting and their implementations. Public policy therefore, emanates undoubtedly from the responsibilities of the State to nurture and protect the aspirations and needs of citizens. The arms of government involved in planning, policy making and budgetary processes are the executive and legislature in the democratic setting. Legislatures are critical institutions in making a democratic system function. In Nigeria, however, the role of legislative institutions in the policymaking process is marginal at best; legislators are inexperienced and unaccustomed to their roles and responsibilities; and the power and authority of the legislature vis-`a-vis the other branches of government, particularly the executive, are often weak or not clearly de?ned. This paper attempts to evaluate the main factors that a?ect the role of Nigerian legislatures in the policy-making process. The ?rst step is to identify what is the contribution of the legislature to the overall policy-making process. The goal is to establish a set of criteria that will enable us to assess the extent to which a particular legislature ful?lls the prescribed roles or not. The purpose is to move away from characterizations such as the legislature is a “strong” or “important” player and to propose a clear “metric” to evaluate whether a legislature is an active player or just a marginal one in the policymaking process. In other words, once we characterize what a particular legislative body may be able to do, and once we establish empirically what it is actually doing, we can then make a judgment call on how active such legislature is in a given country/period with respect to its speci?ed role. Once we have surveyed the extent to which di?erent legislatures play more or less actively some of their roles, the task is to identify the manner in which they exercise those roles. For example, some legislatures may be able to produce their own legislative proposals and thus challenge the executive branch, while some other legislatures may not. Alternatively, policy initiatives may be drafted by political parties and then presented to the party’s legislative contingent for their approval. In this case, we should examine the interaction between parties and legislatures. Notice also that a legislature can be very active either by blocking everything the executive branch proposes, or by reformulating and/or amending those initiatives.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Hence, Government has the responsibility of mobilising human and natural resources of the State and determines who gets what, how and when. This explains why government today, is saddled with the tasks of planning, policy making, budgeting and their implementations. Public policy therefore, emanates undoubtedly from the responsibilities of the State to nurture and protect the aspirations and needs of citizens. On this background the researcher wants to investigate the role of the legislature in policy making process.
The objectives of the study are;
For the successful completion of the study, the following research hypotheses were formulated by the researcher;
H 0
H 1
H 0 2
H 2
This study will give a clear insight on the role of the legislature in policy making process. The study will be beneficial to any students, Nigeria government and the general public. It will also serve as a reference to other researchers that will embark on this topic
The scope of the study covers the role of the legislature in policy making process. The researcher encounters some constrain which limited the scope of the study;
1.7 DEFINITION OF TERMS
LAGISLATURE: A legislature is a deliberative assembly with the authority to make laws for a political entity such as a country or city.
POLICY MAKING: The Policymaking Process. Public policy refers to the actions taken by government its decisions that are intended to solve problems and improve the quality of life for its citizens
1.8 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY
This research work is organized in five chapters, for easy understanding, as follows
Chapter one is concern with the introduction, which consist of the (overview, of the study), historical background, statement of problem, objectives of the study, research hypotheses, significance of the study, scope and limitation of the study, definition of terms and historical background of the study. Chapter two highlights the theoretical framework on which the study is based, thus the review of related literature. Chapter three deals on the research design and methodology adopted in the study. Chapter four concentrate on the data collection and analysis and presentation of finding. Chapter five gives summary, conclusion, and recommendations made of the study