The Legislative Process in Nigeria

In America, Congress is parliament. Congress is composed of two houses, the House of Representatives and the Senate. Members of the lower House (Representatives) serve two years, members of the upper House (Senate) serve six years.
America is divided into 435 Congressional districts and each elects a Congressman to Congress every two years. The upper House, the Senate has each state electing two senators to the Senate every six years.
(As you know, there are differences in the population of American states and you wonder why large and small ones should have the same number oaf senators? California, the largest state in the union, has 35 million people. Alaska, although geographically the largest state in the country, has only 635,000 people. Yet each state has two Senators. Alaska has just one Congressman while California has 54. This is because representation in the lower house, more or less, is based on population; each representative represents approximately 500,000 Americans. Smaller states can have one representative, as Alaska and others do. The idea is to make the lower house democratic and the upper house aristocratic. The lower house represents the people and the upper house represents vested interests in the country. Moreover, the equal representation of the states in the Senate is a way of saying that all states are equal despite their population differences. It remains to be seen whether this structure is democratic or not, but we are not talking about American democracy but Nigerian’. We only referred to America for Nigeria has seen it fit to copy America’s system of democracy, a very problematic democracy itself. In America, the powerful and the rich rule the land. It costs millions of dollars to elect Congressman so that only the rich can run for political office. America is ruled by the rich, making what obtains in America either an aristocracy of money or Oligarchy, but strictly speaking, not a participatory democracy. Indeed, 50% of Americans don’t even bother going to the polls to vote on Election Day.)
In the American system, the House of Representative has 435 members, and the Senate has 100 members. Both Houses follow similar parliamentary procedures. The lower House is headed by the Speaker and the upper House is headed by a President (who is always the vice president of America…he is not always there in the Senate, so the senate generally has a president Pro Tem during its discussions; if there is a tie in votes, the vice president is shipped in to break the tie in favor of the president.)
Laws are made in America pretty much as they are made in Britain. Theoretically, each member of Congress can introduce a Bill but only Bills introduced by the administration and or powerful members of the House are likely to be acted on. A member writes a Bill, that is, writes on paper what he wants to see become law, or policy; he does so in the accepted legalistic format; there is a department of Congress that helps members draft their Bills in legal jargon. The Bill is handed to Mr. Speaker, if in the lower house, or to Mr. President, if in the upper house.
The Speaker/President reads the Bill to the House. Actually, his clerk reads it, usually to an empty House since members are not obligated to hear it. The Speaker/President then routes the Bill to the Committee that he thinks should handle the matter.
Congress has many Standing committees and Ad hoc committees. Standing committees tend to correspond with government departments, such as defense committee (overseeing defense matters), judiciary committee (supervising judicial matters, appropriation committee (supervising financial matters), international relations committee (supervising international relations matters etc). Ad hoc committees are set up to deal with temporary issues and end when the issues are resolved. Each committee is further divided into sub-committees, to deal with specific issues.
Each committee is composed of about 19 members. Generally, the committee is divided among the two parties, Republicans and Democrats. It is divided according to their representation in Congress. At the present, the Republicans have a slight edge over Democrats, so they generally have about two more members in each committee and have its powerful chair persons. Thus, there would be 11 republicans and 8 democrats in each committee, with the chair a republican.