Constitutional Underpinnings of Partisanship and Consensus Building in Nigeria’s National Assembly

Pluralist democracy and its attendant promotion of multi-party competition for political power necessarily makes recourse to partisanship a norm, particularly in a heterogenous society like Nigeria where existing fault lines are reinforced by differences in religion, ethnicity, and other centrifugal forces that have challenged the capacity of political leaders in building cross-party consensus and politics of accommodation on critical issues of national development. The multiplicity of views, policies, and programs is the cornerstone of (parliamentary) democracy in general, and commitments to particular policy orientations, through ideology or party membership, have often been thought of as part of the ethos of participatory democracy. Recent developments across political systems have, however, provoked a rethinking of the virtue or otherwise of partisanship, as recourse to extreme, divisive, and disintegrative tendencies on the altar of pursuing partisan interests has come to the forefront of national debates, whether in the advanced democracies of the West or nascent democracies of Africa and other developing parts of the Global South. In this paper, the author, who has had practical knowledge of the inside working of the legislative institutions at both the federal and the state levels in Nigeria, reflects on the scourge of extreme partisanship in the Nigeria political system, interrogating how the provisions of the presidential Constitution has sought to moderate the impact of partisanship in critical aspects of the workings of the National Assembly and the political system. From the perspective of a participant–observer, the author suggests a few steps for the promotion of politics of accommodation in parliament without necessarily discountenancing the partisan character of national politics inherent in the adoption of multi-party democracy in a system that places less premium on party discipline or ideological commitment.