The Journal of Legislative Studies

Introduction
The significance of post-legislative scrutiny
Franklin De Vrieze & Philip Norton

Articles
A deliberative approach to post legislative scrutiny? Lessons from Australia’s ad hoc approach
Sarah Moulds

The UK post-legislative scrutiny gap
Tom Caygill

Ex-post evaluation in the European Parliament: an increasing influence on the policy cycle
Irmgard Anglmayer & Amandine Scherrer

Post-Legislative Scrutiny in Europe: how the oversight on implementation of legislation by parliaments in Europe is getting stronger
Franklin De Vrieze

How parliaments monitor sustainable development goals – a ground for application of post legislative scrutiny
Fotios Fitsilis & Franklin De Vrieze

Towards parliamentary full cycle engagement in the legislative process: innovations and challenges
Jonathan Murphy

HOW WELL DO AFRICAN SUBNATIONAL LEGISLATURES ENGAGE CITIZENS ONLINE?

Nigerians are more active online today than at any time in the country’s history. A significant portion of their online activities relate to political conversations wherein they discuss and assess (rightly or wrongly) the activities and performance of political actors and public institutions. These, ideally, should also influence how institutions and actors perform their activities and carry out their mandates. There is an expectation that institutions can promote engagement with the public by making information available, and trying to connect with the people, as the ultimate end users of public services.

Is it the case that public institutions running on taxpayers' money are very open, accessible, and inclusive? More than any other government institution, the legislature, as the voice of the people, is expected to connect with the people and online technologies make this easier and cheaper. But are the various legislative houses in Nigeria optimising this?

We take on this important question in our recent article. We focused on the 36 Houses of Assembly in Nigeria in the light of recent debates on 'restructuring', 'devolution', etc., aimed at granting more powers and resources to states, as well as 'financial autonomy' to the assemblies. How prepared are the assemblies to leverage technologies in serving as citizens' plug to democratic governance? What institutional prioritisation in terms of political will and resources demonstrate this? We assessed the parliamentary websites as well as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube accounts of the assemblies and interacted with relevant officials.

Our findings are contextualised within global best practices in legislative digital engagement and compared with resources available to the states, the level of internet users, how long the assemblies had existed, literacy rates and the ages of the presiding Speakers.

Please read at https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/PXB4F3UH92FGBHV4UCPR/full?target=10.1080/13572334.2020.1818928