Legislative Violence and Underdevelopment in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic: Ontological Cousins

Abstract

Since the Fourth Republic, physical fights and other aggressive behaviors have remained constant features of the legislature. The lawmakers have punched, kicked and injured each other; shattered glasses, upturned tables and chairs, and torn their clothes. This condemnable act directly translates to bad governance, widespread corruption, poverty, cronyism and prebendalism across the country. But then, the big question has been what factors are responsible for legislative violence and what are the impacts in the Nigerian society? Against this background, the paper examined legislative violence and its impact on sustainable development in Nigeria. Using the survey descriptive and library research method, the paper revealed that legislative violence is a symptom of imbalance of power between the executive and the legislature. It recommended that the legislature should extricate itself from the self-imposed servants of anti-democratic political merchants whose stock-in-trade is the commercialization of politics and politicization of the legislature. It concluded that the legislature should tame the savages of man and build superb institutions and establish state-of-the-art benchmarks that will serve as touchstone and springboard to economic prosperity, political stability and descent society.