By Prosper Ishaya
Every year, hundreds of legislative proposals flow into Nigeria’s National Assembly. Some concern sweeping reforms, others minor amendments, but for most citizens, they vanish into a black box. Draft bills rarely make it to the public in time for scrutiny, committee debates are largely hidden from view, and even basic details about these bills often remain a mystery.
The reality is this: the Assembly’s website rarely updates the public on in-house activities, and bills, if accessible, are often shared via social media or scattered on various websites without particular archives for overall access.
In a 2023 published essay, Temitayo Odeyemi, a Nigerian political science lecturer, argues that Nigeria’s legislative websites “if they exist at all, are poor, static, and lack basic information.”
This results, he believes, in citizens lacking timely, reliable access to bill texts, sponsors, or committee debates, making it nearly impossible to monitor policymaking or hold leaders accountable. Another expert explains that the resulting low citizen engagement and poor transparency in legislative activities can cause weak oversight functions of the legislature.
To better understand this scale of this disconnect, statistically, according to the Open Parliament Index, Nigeria ranks 4th in West Africa for civic participation and accountability, and 6th for transparency, lagging behind peers like Ghana and Sierra Leone. Moreso, there is shockingly low civic awareness, as it was revealed in one survey conducted in 2023 that about 65% of young Nigerians do not know their federal legislators, with just 15.7% naming their senator and 8.3% naming their House representative.
In recent years however, the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS) — the legislative think-tank responsible for capacity building — has championed e-parliament concepts and trained hundreds of legislative aides, researchers, and staff in parliamentary procedures These efforts aimed to fortify institutional knowledge and support initiatives like e-Hansard and digitisation of legislative content
Meanwhile, the National Assembly itself pledged to roll out e-Hansard and other digital tools. In 2020, the Clerk announced plans to introduce an electronic version of the Hansard — the verbatim record of plenary debates — by early 2021, framing it as part of a broader e-parliament agenda designed to reduce paper use and modernise legislative workflows.
And while these initiatives suggested a turning point, tangible progress has been limited. While NILDS continues to strengthen legislative capacity, and digital tracking platforms have emerged externally, the promise of accessible, real-time parliamentary transparency still remains unfulfilled through them.
It is in light of these systemic challenges that a civic-tech platform, Legis360, was developed. Launched earlier this year, the web-based application was designed to make Nigeria’s opaque lawmaking process more transparent, searchable, and accessible to ordinary citizens. The platform allows to bridge the information gap that has long left citizens unable to track bills, scrutinize lawmakers, or engage meaningfully with legislative work.
On the platform, citizens can search for legislation, follow its progress, and even send messages to lawmakers. In addition, the tool also offers download options for bills.
“The Assembly constantly releases documents in physical formats,” explained Samuel Folorunsho, founder of Legis360 to Social Voices. “We feed these into our system, digitise them, upload them, and also host an AI tool that can help break down the language into something an average citizen can understand with just a prompt.”
Since its launch in April, Legis360 has attracted over 500 registered users, with about 100 returning monthly. And that sense of utility has found presence in the legislature itself.
Sadiq Adewale, Senior Legislative Aide to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, described Legis360 as “a highly useful tool in enhancing accountability and transparency.” In his words, the platform “simplifies complex legal documents into a form that citizens can easily understand,” making it a bridge between lawmakers and the public.
“It has significantly enhanced my legislative work by making interactions with constituents more seamless and effective,” he added.
Outside the government, civil society leaders also see promise.
“Platforms like Legis360 provide real-time data and information to bridge the gap and hold people in governance accountable,” says Shama Balami, Project Officer for Accountable Governance at Oxfam in Nigeria. In his view, the tool reflects an ongoing cultural shift: “It is a gradual process to break old practices and have more people utilize the platform to demand good governance.”
But the platform is far from perfect. At present, its coverage currently focuses on the 10th Assembly, leaving out earlier sessions, a major gap for researchers and journalists seeking historical context. When I tested the site by asking its AI assistant about the 2003 Child Rights Act, it could provide details about the bill itself but not identify its proponents. The absence of digitised archives means many older laws remain disconnected from public view.
Even among current records, availability is uneven. Some bills can be downloaded and pending ones often remain inaccessible. “Without consistent updates, it becomes difficult for users to rely on the platform as a complete reference tool,” Adewale acknowledged, also urging the team to expand coverage back to the start of the Fourth Republic.
Folorunsho insists these are challenges of scale and resources, not intent. The team is gradually backfilling records from earlier Assemblies and has begun training legislative aides to ensure messages from constituents are logged and responded to systematically. But the founder is also candid about the limits of civic tech in isolation.
“We can build the best tools, but if the institutions don’t open up data consistently, there will always be bottlenecks.”
There are also questions about how effectively the “message your lawmaker” feature functions. While users can draft and send messages, the process is not as straightforward as citizens might expect. According to the tool’s developers, the system was deliberately designed to balance access with legislators’ privacy concerns. Instead of publishing private contacts, each lawmaker has a secure login, while legislative aides monitor accounts, organise messages, and present them to their principals.
The platform has also introduced “call to action” campaigns — pre-written petitions on urgent issues, such as recent killings in Benue State — and tracks both the volume of messages and lawmakers’ responses.
But because messages are filtered through aides and lawmakers rarely log in themselves, the system stops short of real-time accountability. For citizens expecting direct replies, that gap risks undermining trust. Similar hurdles have been seen in civic tech projects like BudgIT’s Tracka and FollowTheMoney, which also rely on digital petitions but struggle to secure consistent engagement from officials.
Going forward, the task for Legis360 will not only be to improve its own systems, but to push for deeper cultural change inside the National Assembly.
Yet the tool’s early impact suggests possibility. “Digital tools such as Legis360 represent more than just technological innovation,” said Adewale, the Speaker’s aide. “They embody a strong commitment to transparency, accountability, and good governance. In the future, such platforms will be instrumental in strengthening Nigeria’s democracy.”
