Ever looked at a lawmaker and thought “I could do that job”? Here’s what the law actually requires before you can try. The 1999 Constitution (as amended) sets baseline qualifications for each seat. The exact wording covers citizenship, age, and education, here’s the gist, in plain terms: Age. Nigeria lowered its age requirements in 2018 […]
Category Archives: The legislature
Quick vocabulary check before we go further: “bicameral” just means “two chambers.” “Unicameral” means one. Nigeria’s National Assembly is bicameral, Senate plus House of Representatives. Every State House of Assembly, by contrast, is unicameral, just one chamber, no upper/lower split. Why the difference? At the federal level, Nigeria is a union of 36 states plus […]
Everything we’ve covered so far; bills, chambers, committees, sits under one of three big jobs every legislature does. Naming them clearly makes the rest of this series click into place. Job 1: Lawmaking. The one everybody knows. Writing, debating, and passing the laws that govern the country or state, everything from the annual budget to […]
We already walked through how a bill becomes an Act at the federal level (First Reading, Second Reading, Committee, Third Reading, then the President’s assent). Good news: your State House of Assembly follows almost the exact same choreography, with two differences worth knowing. The stages are the same. A bill is introduced (First Reading), debated […]
If lawmaking is the legislature’s most visible job, oversight is its most underrated one, and it’s the job most directly connected to everything GLOW is trying to do. In plain terms, oversight means the legislature checking the Executive’s homework. Once a budget is approved and money starts flowing to ministries, agencies, and projects, oversight is […]
There’s an old saying in government: whoever controls the money controls the decisions. In Nigeria, as in most democracies, that control formally belongs to the legislature, not the President, not the Governor. This is often called “the power of the purse.” Here’s how it actually works. Each year, the Executive (the President federally, a Governor […]
If you picture “the National Assembly at work” as 469 people arguing in one big chamber, you’re picturing the part that matters least. Most of the real work; the detailed reading, the expert questioning, the actual shaping of a bill or budget line, happens in committees, in smaller rooms, with far less press attention. A […]
Ten posts in, you’ve picked up a lot of vocabulary. Here it all is in one place, bookmark this one. Act — a bill that has completed the full legislative process and been signed into law. Assent — the President’s or Governor’s formal signature approving a bill into law. Bicameral — a legislature with two […]
Elections aren’t the only way a lawmaker’s time in office can end. Nigerian law provides a few other exits, some driven by fellow lawmakers, one driven directly by citizens. Impeachment-style removal, from within. This isn’t about removing an ordinary Senator or Representative by a simple vote of colleagues, it mainly applies to principal officers, most […]
Everything in this series has been building toward one practical question: who, specifically, represents you? Here’s exactly how to find out. Step 1: Know your state and your Local Government Area (LGA). Nigeria’s federal constituencies are built from LGAs, and your Senate seat is tied to your state (specifically, one of three senatorial districts within […]