Nigeria: Between Re-Federalisation and Disintegration

Abstract

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is currently battling to survive the onslaught of centrifugal forces tearing at its foundation of nationhood. Caught between waves of separatist agitations in its eastern geopolitical zone, fiscal federalist/ethno-militia strife in its oil-rich Niger Delta region, regional autonomy claims in its south western segment, farmers/pastoralists pogrom in the middle belt, Islamist insurgency in its north eastern area, persistent minority/majority ethno-religious conflicts and cattle-rustling criminality in the north western axis, the country is practically at “war” with itself. Six years before gaining independence from colonial Britain, Nigeria had been configured as a federation of three regions each of which has since been split at different times to have the present thirty six federating states. Whereas subnational fragmentation seems to have had salutary effect underscoring one important condition for federal stability, the country has remained on the cusp of disintegration. Nigeria’s extant federal system bears little or no resemblance to what was formally adopted at inception in 1954. There is growing unanimity that the centralizing features introduced by military regimes and retained in Nigeria’s current operative constitutional document are overdue for reforms as they fall short of basic federalism principles and are probably responsible for the persistence and prevalence of intractable schisms across Nigeria’s ethno-religious divide. In this paper, we offer an overview of Nigeria’s federal system in the context of current agitations for constitutional reforms or restructuring to strip the system of anti-federalist features. We adopt a doctrinal analytical method by setting out the basic features of the federal system against the background of peculiar features of the system in Nigeria and their concomitant effects on the country’s federalism credentials. We conclude that current pervasive nation-wide discontents are the unintended consequences of misalignment between the principles and practice of federalism, putting the country at the risk of disintegration.