Nigerian Federalism

Nigerian Federalism: Continuing Quest for Stability and
Nation-Building explores the nature of and the debate over a number of
recurrent issues, such as the “origins of Nigerian federalism, the
number of state units in the federal system, fiscal issues, political
parties, distributional issues, and intergovernmental relations” in
Nigerian federalism since the establishment of protofederalism under the
Richards Constitution, 1946 seventy years ago. In exploring the issues,
the book seeks to answer the question, “what accounts for the
persistence of Nigerian federalism, despite the serious discontents that
the debate throws up now and again?” The book offers a
reinterpretation, which argues that the demand for open-access federalism,
which anchors the major trend in the age-long debate on the structure of
Nigerian federalism, is ahistorical and therefore static.

The book
uniquely emphasises the need to periodise the practice of Nigerian
federalism into four major phases. Based on the periodisation, two
cardinal propositions emerge from the various chapters of the book.
First, in spite of separatist and centrifugal threats to its existence,
Nigerian federalism has typically never sought to eliminate diversity,
but to manage it. In this sense, the construction of Nigeria’s federal
system from its earliest beginnings shows clearly that it is both a
creature of diversity and an understanding that diversity will remain
ingrained in its DNA. Secondly, Nigeria’s federal practice has not
sought to mirror any model of “open-access federalism”, be it in the United
States, Canada or elsewhere. Instead, Nigeria’s federal system has been a
homegrown, if unstable modulation between foedus and separatus, a
constantly negotiated terrain among centripetal and centrifugal forces
and between centralisation and decentralisation. Consequently, a
historical, periodised understanding of Nigerian federalism is
inevitably essential. It is this historical and
theoretical-methodological approach to explaining and understanding
Nigerian federalism that gives the book its unique character.

The book
is for the general reader as well as for students, including researchers
of Nigerian federalism and of Nigerian constitutional and political
development, policymakers, and political parties.