Partisanship, Legislative Decision and E-Voting in Nigeria: The Case Study of the 2022 Alteration (Amendment) of the 1999 Constitution

Abstract

This study examines the impact of bipartisanship on legislative decision and voting behaviour among members of the 9th House of Representatives in Nigeria using the 2022 constitutional amendment. When Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999, after a prolonged military rule, it operated with a constitution produced by the military. Consequently, a lot of challenges emerged  that threatened the existence of the country and exposed the weaknesses of the institutions as well as the fragility of the new democracy. Thus, different voices from various segments of society called for the amendment of the 1999 constitution. Thus, the constitution has been amended five times since 2010. However, the 2022 amendment was unique because an E-voting machine was installed and used by the House of Representatives to vote on the 2022 amendments. Prior to this time, the voice vote was often used thereby undermining the constitutional provisions and making it difficult to know if the requirement for two-thirds majority vote to pass or amend any section of the constitution was met or otherwise. Considering the complexity of Nigerian society and the multi-party system in operation, this study examined how bipartisanship shapes members’ voting decisions and found that no single party received the two-thirds majority threshold required to pass any clause alone. Therefore, 58 items were passed under bipartisan support, and one item was 
negatived (rejected) under bipartisan votes. Thus, 59 of the 68 items voted on were under bipartisan collaboration. This shows that bipartisanship was at work in passing 86.76 percent of the items considered and voted on using e-voting.