Understanding Executive Dominance in Nigeria’s National and Subnational Legislatures

In the Sub-Saharan African context, legislative chambers have generally been considered weak, rubber-stamp institutions dominated by strong executives. Recent scholarship has, however, challenged this by demonstrating variation in legislative assertiveness across African countries and within countries over time. By doing so, historical path dependencies and access to resources have been put forth as major factors explaining why some Members of Parliament (MPs) are more independent from senior powerholders. This independence could be crucial to understand why MPs are more inclined to represent their constituents’ need in policy arenas. In this paper, we expand on this research agenda by drawing on the case of Nigeria. Leveraging Nigeria’s federal structure, we compare the National Assembly with subnational Houses of Assembly in three (out of 36) states in the country: Lagos, Jigawa, Bayelsa. We argue that MPs at the national level are more independent from the president than MPs at state levels are independent from governors. We attribute this difference to patronage dynamics with access to state resources more tightly controlled at the subnational than at the national level. In addition, we highlight how national MPs are also often beholden to state governors. Finally, we identify conditions that weaken governors’ control over resources and their MPs.