2 - Federalism, Constitutional Reform, and the Elusive Quest for ‘Political Restructuring’ in Nigeria's Fourth Republic

Summary

Introduction

The 1999 Nigerian Constitution for the Fourth Republic has been widely criticized and repeatedly disparaged for containing ‘many contradictions that impede harmony and development of Nigeria’ (Daily Trust 2020). Procedurally, the Constitution has attracted the opprobrium of being the creation of a sectional military clique, rather than of a representative constituent assembly or of the Nigerian peoples voting in a referendum. Substantively, the document has been denounced for entrenching a ‘unitary federalism’ that is ill-suited to Nigeria's multi-ethnic complexity and detrimental to its aspirations for democratic stability and socio-economic prosperity (Ihonvbere 2000: 361). This unitary federalism emerged over three decades of military rule (1966–1999), during which the soldiers drastically reconfigured a regional-federalist legacy inherited from the late colonial and early independence eras (1954–1966), replacing it with a highly centralized multi-state federal structure. Consequently, contemporary agitators for ‘political restructuring’ seek to reverse the military's previous restructuring or ‘de-structuring’ of Nigeria, thereby rectifying the ‘birth defects’ arising from the soldiers’ authoritarian constitution making and centrist federation building (Ihonvbere 2000, 358; Adebowale and Oghifo 2017; Fayemi 2019; also see Osaghae in this volume).

The actual implementation of constitutional change in the Fourth Republic, however, has largely defied the vociferous and often rancorous agitations for restructuring. From the First Constitutional Alteration Act of 2010 through to the Fourth Alteration Laws of 2017, successive amendments to the 1999 Constitution have not produced fundamental changes in the institutional architectures of Nigeria's federal governance. Instead, supermajorities in national and sub-national legislatures have ratified alterations that consolidated Nigeria's centralization, while promoting polity-wide electoral governance reforms. Despite their contentiousness and their failure to shape formal constitutional change, however, agitations for restructuring remain relentless and resonant. The rhetoric of restructuring continues to highlight flaws and irregularities in Nigerian federalism, to dominate constitutional discourse in the country, and to impact informal, incremental, or non-constitutional political developments in the Fourth Republic.

This discussion of restructuring, federalism, and constitutional politics in the Fourth Republic begins with a historical analysis. The analysis frames current agitations for restructuring as part of a long-standing and checkered search, especially since the crisis and collapse of the First Republic (1960–1966), for stable federal institutions of self-rule, shared rule, and limited rule in Nigeria's ethnically fractious society. Following this historical analysis, the centrepiece of the chapter analyses the profound, multifaceted challenges associated with advocacy for restructuring in the Fourth Republic.