OVERSIGHT OR EXTRACTION? LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEES IN NIGERIA AND THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF CLIENTELISM AND RENT-SEEKING

Abstract

We interrogated in this article the paradoxical role of legislative committees in Nigeria, asking whether constitutionally mandated oversight functions have, in practice, been transformed into mechanisms of extraction. While legislative committees are designed to promote accountability, transparency, and the rule of law, we argue that they have increasingly become institutional sites for the routinization of clientelism and rent-seeking. We draw our methods from the doctrinal analysis, political economy theory, and normative legal critique to demonstrate how committee procedures particularly investigative hearings, oversight visits, budget scrutiny, and regulatory confirmations are frequently deployed to secure informal benefits from private actors and economic agents. We equally advanced in this article the central claim that clientelism and rent seeking in Nigeria’s legislative committees are no longer episodic deviations but have become institutionalized practices sustained by formal rules, discretionary powers, and weak accountability mechanisms. This institutionalization has profound implications for private and property relations, including regulatory uncertainty, distorted market access, insecure property rights, and the erosion of contractual predictability. We situate legislative committee practices within broader debates on governance, law, and political economy and highlights how legal institutions may inadvertently legitimize informal extraction. We thereafter conclude this article by proposing normative and institutional reforms aimed at reclaiming legislative oversight as a genuine instrument of accountability rather than a vehicle for rent extraction.