The Nigerian State as Obstacle to Federalism

The Nigerian State as Obstacle to Federalism: Towards a New Constitutional Compact for Democratic Politics

“Under a true federal constitution, each group, however small, is entitled to the same treatment as any other group, however large.  Opportunity must be afforded to each to evolve its own peculiar political institution.  The present structure reinforces indigenous colonialism- a crude, harsh, unscientific and illogical system”. – Obafemi Awolowo.
“If we continue to operate a very defective system, this country would face very serious danger of survival because this constitution cannot sustain this country”. -Lateef Adegbite.
Most of the recent discussions on political restructuring in Nigeria have been isolated from a serious and holistic attention to the character of the Nigerian state.  This compartmentalized approach has culminated in rather limited, even ahistorical interpretations, analysis, conclusions, and projections.  In this chapter, we seek to argue that the nature, character and politics of the Nigerian state as presently constituted mediates possibilities for democracy and the required political engineering for true federalism.  The continuing crisis of power and governance, the inability to construct hegemony or a national project, and deepening socio-economic crisis are all precipitates of state failure even state exhaustion in certain spheres. While there have been critical tendencies, coalitions and counter-coalitions within the state and the constituencies of the political elite, the fundamental and structural character of the state as a violent, privatized, insensitive, unstable, vulnerable, and non-hegemonic force remains intact.i  In the following discussion, we examine the historical origins of the state to set the context; isolate the tendencies within the country’s distinctive political economy; examine the process of defederalization and the role of the military; critique the 1999 constitution; and finally, we propose an alternative constitutional approach to political restructuring and refederalization.
History, Class and State in Nigerian Politics
Nigerian politics continues to reflect and carry the stamp its colonial and neo-colonial experiences as well as then elite that lacks hegemony and a sense of nation.  This elite, lacking a strong and viable base in production, turns to the state as its primary instrument of primitive accumulation.  In this process, the state is mangled and rendered impotent in the quest for nationhood, growth, and development, much less democracy.  Interestingly, the state that the political elite hope to utilize as the weapon for nation building and for facilitating accumulation has remained unstable, inefficient, ineffective, and incapable of building hegemony.  Consequently, the state, privatized by the corrupt elite to substitute for its tenuous relation to productive activities, relies on violence, repression, and other forms of manipulation to reproduce itself and maintain a form of political domination.  It is therefore important to understand the dynamics of Nigeria’s distinctive political economy and social balances as well as the lasting impact of the social formation’s historical experiences in order to fully appreciate the crisis of politics and power.ii
In several ways, Nigeria is a victim of its history.  The social forces, institutions, external relations, and domestic patterns of accumulation and exchange bequeathed by western imperialism have continued to mediate opportunities for growth, development, and democracy.  Over four decades of independence has witnessed several creative and not-so-creative efforts at engaging the contradictions and crises unleashed by this historical inheritance.  Such engagements have themselves been mediated by the character of an elite that had bee structured to reproduce rather than restructure the status quo.
It is well established in the literature that Nigeria’s contact with the forces of western imperialism had far-reaching impacts on state and class formation, on political and social values, the patterns of accumulation, and the country’s location and role in the global divisions of labor and power.  The programmed transition to neo-colonial relations continued to mediate the ability of the state and its custodians to find democratic avenues for managing the crisis of politics.  In fact, the Nigerian elite appears to have sacrificed opportunities for initiating a national project on the alter of short-term interests even if it meant the subversion of the very institutions it required for maintaining its own longer-term interests.  Consequently, in spite of the creation of several states and local governments, a new national anthem, new constitutions and forms of government, and changing leaderships especially between the military and so-called civilians, the Nigerian state remains plagued with all sorts of negative coalitions, contradictions, conflicts and instability.  At the core of the contradictions is the national question.  Essentially, Nigerians have never had the opportunity to discuss and reach some consensus on how the nation should be structured, power defined, contestations for power organized, resources generated and allocated, rights protected, and the larger democratic project articulated and compacted in a truly democratic constitution.  It is embarrassing that in almost four decades after political independence, Nigerians still find data, political arrangements, and institutions designed by the brutal and totally undemocratic and illegitimate colonial state as the point of reference or comparison with their contemporary realities and predicaments.
The character of the Nigerian state continues to be directly responsible for reproducing the country’s deepening socio-economic and political contradictions.  In fact, the state seems to worsen the country’s predicaments with every policy action or inaction it initiates or fails to initiate in the process of trying to consolidate the interests of its custodians.  The state has never been able to build an appreciable degree of confidence among Nigerians, ensure some discipline within the ranks of the elite, manage the economy in the interest of the people, or construct the much needed platforms of inclusion, tolerance, and participation.  As well, the state has been captured and privatized by a tiny fraction of the elite that use public institutions and resources to terrorize non-bourgeois communities, abuse human rights, loot public funds, and mortgage the future of the citizenry.  Perceived as a wicked, aloof, insensitive, corrupt, and distant force, Nigerians relate to the state as enemy.  It is seen as an enemy that must, as opportunity permits, be subverted, avoided, cheated, dismantled, and destroyed if the interests of the majority of the citizenry are to be protected.  For all intents and purposes, the repressive and “captured” postcolonial Nigerian state seems to do everything to provoke non-bourgeois forces.
The nature and composition of the state is important and central to the nature of political arrangements adopted in any social formation.  If it is an unstable, non-hegemonic, and illegitimate state, there is often the tendency to adopt desperate programs to shore up its institutions.  Thus the state could be federal in name but in reality under the domination of a single dictator, a military junta, or cabal of autocrats with a visible distaste for democracy.  Once a state is militarized, it loses the capacity to mediate contradictions within and between political communities, becomes intolerant of opposition, and becomes extra-sensitive to criticism.  It diverts scarce resources to defense and security and punishes minority and vulnerable communities.  The overall political values quite often, reflect a centralizing tendency that culminates in the suffocation of civil society and the closure of democratic platforms to popular interests.  The net consequence of such developments is not just the erosion of democratic values but also the subversion of the national project and the intensification of conflicts.  The custodians of state power in Nigeria have done such a terrible job at building those elements that pull a people together to cultivate a national identity and culture.  The evidence can be seen in the fact that on the eve of the twenty-first century, Nigeria has no national (s)hero, hardly enjoys stability, no national identity, and the rate at which the youth abandon the country for foreign lands remains alarming.  At all levels, economic, political, social, and ideological, even spiritual, the state and its custodians have failed woefully.    This has been Nigeria’s experience since political independence in October 1960.  The plight of marginalized and minority communities and nationalities all over the country arise from the situation and patterns that we have summarized above.
Tendencies in Contemporary Nigerian Politics
The consequences of the contradictions of Nigeria’s history and post-colonial politics have generated certain broad and specific tendencies that continue to shape the country’s political economy.  It is important to take a look at these tendencies because Nigerians are wont to forget or ignore them in the face of pressures from dictatorships and illiberal democratic arrangements.  The military has been unable to engage, mediate, or contain these tendencies and contradiction largely due to its commandist structure and character.  The contradictions arising from the tendencies have survived various forms of military arrangements since 1966.  Civilian governments have hardly done better.  Many, like the Obasanjo government behave like military juntas.  Others simply were too steeped in disorganization and corruption, and too impatient with democracy that the contradictions of underdevelopment were simply multiplied.  While post-colonial political alignments and realignments have been critical to the nature of Nigerian politics and society, the fundamental basis of the society has not changed even if new issues, institutions, contradictions, and coalitions have been introduced and in some ways power relations have been marginally reconfigured.
The structure of the Nigerian federation reflects the vacillations between civilian and military dictatorships.  Years of military rule have turned the weak federation inherited at political independence into a unitary system.  Most of the current politicians, bureaucrats, and other political actors have become used, even addicted to the commandist and authoritarian ways of the military.  This development has had far reaching implications for stability and democracy.  Perceived or real inequities arising from a wobbled federal arrangement or non-arrangement for that matter, have congealed loyalties to alternative sites of power.  The net result is the further erosion of an already tenuous legitimacy.  Opportunistic military officers have frequently capitalized on this situation to grab power and initiate another gyration in the complex waters of Nigerian politics.
The deepening economic crisis has had very deep implications for politics, specially the building of democratic institutions.  There is a tendency to ignore the economics of transition politics.  In the Nigerian situation, deindustrialization, mass poverty, economic dislocation, environmental abuse, rising foreign debt and debt-servicing obligations, and the neglect of rural areas and producers continue to significantly affect the nature of Nigerian politics.  The failed structural adjustment program and in particular, the unequal distribution of the pains and costs of adjustment have generated new political coalitions and interests that cannot be ignored in any serious discussion of the politics of the country.  How can poor people tolerate the political shortcomings of the elites?  How much participation can be expected from a poverty-stricken and alienated populace?  Will the neo-colonial state have the resources to fully operationalize the requirements of a full democratic system?  These issues have created a wide gulf between the leaders and the people thus making the cultivation of democratic values almost impossible.
The shifting or changing character of the Nigeria military is a central feature of contemporary Nigerian life.  What to do with the military remains part of the critical political discourse in Nigeria.  Yet, containing the military remains a very prominent political and vexing question.  The proposals have been as diverse as there are interest groups: demobilization, re-education, constitutional control, reorganization, retraining, regionalized commands, total disbanding, and the democratization of recruitment into the military.  Many of these prescriptions that are being insisted upon by some nationality groups and aggrieved communities are reflective of total dissatisfaction with the nature of the Nigerian federation, the character of leadership, and the injustices that pervade the country.  Without doubt the Nigerian military has disgraced itself beyond redemption and aside from deliberately distorting national political structures, institutions, and relations within and between communities, it also remains a serious challenge to the survival of post-military democratic arrangements.  In more recent times, the retired fraction of the military elite has begun to make a direct bid for power while retaining the capacity to significantly influence party formation, funding, selection of candidates, ministerial appointments and political alliances.  The capacity to execute these critical political initiatives has been directly related to the extent of corruption perpetrated while in office.  These have clear implications for the nature of power politics in Nigeria.
The threat of authoritarianism continues to stare Nigerians in the face.  This is a tendency that has steadily built up since political independence but was given a specific for or character by the rapacious military juntas, especially the Badangida and Abacha juntas.  The clear evidence is in the ease with which the late General Abacha almost succeeded in civilianizing himself and his brutal dictatorship.  Though he died unsung and to the relief of several national and international constituencies, Abacha continues to enjoy the loyalty of elements across society that were part of his diabolical political agenda.  Such a dictatorship would have made only superficial pretensions to democracy with the existence of five so-called political parties and a national assembly while continuing the suffocation of civil society.  Nigerians would for a long time have problems with how to wear down the authoritarian values and attitudes bequeathed by the military.  This would not be easy because many of those that have been elected as legislators and into executive positions had been ardent supporters of the past dictatorships.  While the only hope for effectively addressing this problem lies in strengthening civil society, it will require a lot of understanding and concessions from the custodians of state power to get on this path.  This is currently not on the political screen in Nigeria.  If anything, authoritarian tendencies continue to shape the character of politics especially under Obasanjo’s limited regard for the constitution and the illiberal dispositions of the political elite.
The management of primordial identities and politics remain critical to determining the context of Nigerian politics, indeed, the future of the Nigerian nation-state.  This has developed over the years into one of the top five national contradictions that has led to the loss of thousands of lives and would continue until adequately addressed.  There are several dimensions to this.  Not only in terms of suspicions and contradictions between ethnic, religious, and regional interests but also within each primordial constituency.  The tendency has been to focus so much on the contestations between the majority Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa ethnic groups that the minorities have been more or less ignored.  As well, within each of the majority groups are significant coalitions and divisions that mediate the ability of groups to act as absolute mobilizational weapons.  In other words, while ethnicity and religion remain very critical issues in the formulation of political interests and postures, they are also being mediated by issues of class and the relative consciousness of the Nigerian people as they confront the challenges of survival.  To be sure, the ethnic and minority issue is directly tied to the questions of political restructuring, refederalization, revenue allocation, and democratic consolidation.  If the political elite remains insensitive to popular demands on these issues, ethnic postures would get consolidated and become ever more violent.  Already, invented identities are complicating the ability of ethnic groups to articulate clear political agendas.  This has led to an internalization of violence as sub-ethnic groups engage each other in a struggle for supremacy and identity, as well as spurious claims to territory.  On the other hand, the unsteady state responds with more violence to this internalization thus further complicating opportunities for political negotiation.
Resource generation and distribution often called “revenue allocation” in Nigeria remains one of the most critical aspects of power politics in Nigeria that is hidden behind the veil of ethnic identity.  In some way, this is related to the structure of Nigerian federalism and the dominant role of the center.  It is also tied to the question of minority rights, center-periphery relations, and the traditional contestation for hegemony between the dominant groups.  Of course, given the neglect of non-oil wealth, the focus today is on oil, which generates well over half of national revenues and about 95 per cent of foreign exchange earnings.  The Nigerian rentier state has not just become the source of accumulation but it has also become the focus of elite competition and thus a stabilizing force: no one wants to hurt or kill the golden goose that lays the eggs!  But minorities, oil producing communities, oil producing states, and bourgeois elements from oil producing areas are not pleased at the deprivations their communities suffer and the perceived ways in which oil wealth is used to promote development in non-oil producing areas.  Until demands for a just and equitable formula for revenue allocation is found, these increasingly restless communities would continue to challenge the legitimacy of the state and reject existing policies.  If the central government does not want to grant the demands from the oil producing states and communities for the use of the derivation principle as the basis of revenue allocation, then it has to find an alternative formula that would satisfy the communities.
The character, organization, discipline, world-view and politics of the Nigerian political elite negates possibilities for democracy and federalism.  Though it has always collaborated with military juntas, it has not fared well under the military.  It has been abused, manipulated, intimidated, and rendered almost useless by a rather arrogant military structure.  Though it is only just beginning to reorganize itself, it would continue to pay for its experience under the military in the next three to four decades.  It does not help an elite to be perceived by the populace as corrupt, irresponsible, unprincipled, unreliable, and useless.  As indicated earlier, the tenuous relation of the Nigerian elite to productive activities is directly responsible for its subservience to foreign capital and its reliance on the state for accumulation.  Its fixation on primitive accumulation has prevented it from developing powerful constituencies, forging a vision for the country, and developing an ideological context for growth and development.  This bourgeois class is highly factionalized and fractionalized and has been unable to significantly operate beyond the narrow confines of its ethnic and regional as well as ethnic enclaves.  Unless this bourgeois class begins to seriously construct its politics across primordial lines, it would remain incapable of constructing the type of national constituencies needed to build a new politics for democracy and development.  The elite has already begun to pay for its allegiance with the past dictators as civil society groups are steadily capitalizing on the newfound democratic environment to question the credentials and credibility of the political elite, in particular, those holding political and elective positions.  Developments over Sharia law, contestations in the Niger Delta and Lagos, and permanent rumors of military coups are indicators of an unsteady and uncertain elite in charge of an unstable and non-hegemonic state.  This is hardly a recipe for democracy or federalism because political uncertainly encourages absolutism and the privatization and concentration of power.  The shallowness of its efforts at a national character and platform is evident in the ease with which such efforts dissolve into ethnic and other forms of engagement in the face of crisis.
A tendency that does not appear to have improved is the largely conservative political agenda and world-view of the Nigerian elite. Nigerian politicians do not discuss gender and the environment.  Largely a reflection of their conservative and opportunistic disposition, gender and environmental issues are beginning to emerge as critical issues influencing constituency building and democratic politics.  Without doubt, the emergence of several NGOs and the experiences of the minority communities especially the Ogonis and the Ijaws have contributed significantly to introducing the critical themes of minorities, resource control, the environment, and gender into political discourses in Nigeria. Environmental questions are now directly tied to contradictions and conflicts over questions of revenue generation and allocation and refederalization.  As well, the corrupt and insensitive political styles of the custodians of state power is beginning to galvanize women all over the country to develop clear political programs.  If, in the context of current global debates, Nigerian politicians still fail to take these issues seriously, we can understand why they remain insensitive to the demands of non-bourgeois constituencies for a new democratic compact.
The rise of critical and militant opposition politics in Nigeria evaporated to a large extent with political independence.  It was only resuscitated in a national sense following the 1993 annulment of the presidential election result won by Chief M.K.O. Abiola of the Social Democratic Party (SDP).  Since then, the country has moved along very significantly on the political front.  Yet, all has not been well in spite of the emergence of scores of civil liberties organizations, new leaders, and opposition movements on the political terrain.  The opposition has been vulnerable to penetration, domestication, corruption, and incorporation by the state and its agents.  Many opposition movements have been characterized in several ways by undemocratic conduct, ideological bankruptcy, marginalization of women, ethnic and regional chauvinism, opportunism, limited vision, weak political programs, and a failure to effectively network for effectiveness.  Many are simply urban based, depend excessively on foreign sources of funding, do not strive to build new dialogues or cultivate new constituencies, and continue to have a very narrow definition of politics and power.  How the opposition works out its own politics and interacts with civil society organizations will be critical to how Nigerian politics will be constructed and reproduced in the future.  The withdrawal of the military from politics in May 1999 has now opened up new challenges and paths to engaging the state and its agents.  The trend towards the clarification of objectives, identifying and training new leaders, building new networks, and working out more effective strategies to ensure maximum impact would continue to be critical to the depth and direction of democratic politics in Nigeria.  This would equally determine, to some extent, how the military would react to the politics of power struggles in the future.
Finally, the tendencies that have prevented the strengthening of civil society, the construction of state hegemony, or the cultivation of democratic values have combined with other contradictions to reify power, prevent political engineering, and have led to authoritarian tendencies even under the so-called democratic regime of Olusegun Obasanjo.  This is where we must locate the problems of political restructuring and the challenges of refederalization after decades of irresponsible and vicious military dictatorships.
Reifying Political Power and the Rise of Bigman Rule
It is important to understand the root of our current predicament.  While it is true that the Nigerian state is not constituted to build democracy, its custodians are much worse.  It is the character and hollowness of the world-view of this elite that has precipitated Nigeria’s contemporary predicament and the difficulty of refederalization.  This is the more amazing given the obvious relevance of refederalization to the resolution of deepening political crisis and violence in the country.  One of the consequences of colonialism in developing societies is the legacy of the reification of power.  Because the colonial state was absolutist in every sense, it combined the power of life and death and dispensed power without consultation or accountability.  The colonial governor or district officer was the executive, judiciary, and legislature all rolled into one.  The indigenous elites that had been structurally incorporated into the power and economic networks of colonialism following World War II were nurtured in the context of these undemocratic values.  Indeed, many actively participated in the brutalization of their peoples and were rewarded with all sorts of decorations.  Given the tenuous relation of the African elite to productive activities, political independence witnessed the capture of political power without economic power.  Consequently, accumulation, survival, and domination could only be guaranteed through the unmediated control of state power.  The new elite was thus forced to devise strategies of ideological containment, depoliticization, diversion, violence, and human rights abuses to ward off opposition.  This situation in itself raised the premium on power to new and frightening proportions.  To capture, control and effectively deploy political power therefore, villages were raided, taxes were imposed, communities were punished for not voting rightly, and suspects or enemies of the state were found in all nooks and corners of the society.  The military formations were strengthened as private security outfits were set up and armed to the teeth.  External scapegoats were found abroad and promptly blamed for the failures of misguided policies.  In short, the postcolonial African elite squandered all opportunities to mobilize the people and deploy their unbounded energies to the task of decolonization, development, and democracy.  It is no wonder that one after the other, the postcolonial regimes were sacked or consumed by the very contradictions they had created.  The battle between factions and fractions of the power elite revolved around how to capture and monopolize the state at the expense of popular groups and other marginalized constituencies.  The last concern for such beleaguered elite was sharing the power that they had managed to grab through all sorts of underhand and clearly extra-legal methods.  Yet, the entire theory and practice of federalism, especially in plural societies, is anchored on power sharing.
What has become power sharing in the context of Nigerian federalism would normally be a good political agenda designed to open up opportunities to disadvantaged communities and give all nationality, religious, and cultural groups an almost equal opportunity to manage the affairs of the nation.  But in the Nigerian context, we need to be very cautious if we are to understand the driving forces behind the strident calls for power sharing that has become a national obsession.  The truth is that Nigerian politicians have been calling for new patterns of power sharing not because they are genuinely interested in gaining a share of power in the interest of their respective nationality, religious, or interest groups, but because they see such arrangements as an easy route to grab power and deploy it for private primitive accumulation.
There is no evidence of any correlation between the access that Nigerian elites have enjoyed under the guise of power sharing and an improvement in the conditions of living of the Nigerian people.  It is actually possible to contend that the politics of power sharing has not in any way been of benefit to the generality of Nigerians.  In fact, members of the political elite have grabbed power directly and though the working of various power sharing arrangements and have turned around to use that power to dominate, abuse, marginalize, terrorize, exploit and intimidate non-bourgeois communities and constituencies.  The criminal looting of public funds, the mismanagement of the public services, the gross inefficiency of the bureaucracy, and the absence of basic facilities needed to make life comfortable for the majority are indicators of the failure of the Nigerian elite and its use of political power.  Nigerians, in spite of the production and exportation of oil and the collection of well over $250billion since 1958 from oil sales, have grown poorer and poorer.  As a federal state, power-sharing arrangements have revolved around the following:  a). Rotation of party/political positions among geo-ethnic zones; b). Federal character arrangements in political appointments guaranteed in the constitution; and c). Zoning arrangements designed by political parties to ensure the distribution of party/political positions;
However, in spite of all the arguments, quarrels, and conflicts over power sharing since 1960, the results have failed to reassure minorities and marginalized communities just as it has failed woefully in generating a sense of inclusion, patriotism, or belief in the national project.  It has not bridged the distrust between Christians and Muslims; between north and south or east and west; between oil producing and non-oil producing communities; between the military and civilians; or between the state and civil society.  As well, it has not resolved the perpetual distrust and conflicts between majority and minority ethnic groups in the country.  With the pathological fixation of the Nigerian elite on power grabbing by any means to facilitate private accumulation, it is in no position to address these contradictions.  Power sharing requires some degree of discipline and an ability to rely less on the direct deployment of state control in the interest of private accumulation.  Power sharing requires that the political elite respect the rules of political competition and learn to accept defeat.  Rather, the Nigerian elite does not accept defeat.  The state is seen as a private domain.  Those that control power make no distinction between their personal bank accounts and the public purse.  As well, the power elite does not believe in the give-and-take that informs and strengthens democratic politics.  Many have been known to fund military coups against legitimately elected governments.  The irrationality of the Nigerian power elite, often rationalized in the name of speaking for or representing particular ethnic and regional or religious communities, has worked directly to encourage the excessive concentration of power at the center and the near total erosion of federalism.  As indicated earlier, military rule, in which the elite robustly participated at all levels, did not help the situation.  Now that the military has temporarily disengaged from formal politics, its proteges appear incapable of carrying out the necessary political restructuring needed to support the consolidation of democracy.  Why has this been the case in Nigeria?
Among other explanations, the answer can be found in the premium placed on power in the postcolonial era.  The state has become the quickest instrument of capital accumulation.  The challenge is to penetrate it by any means necessary and preside over its resources.  The reality is that the resources are not generated from tax collection by the so-called federal government.  Rather, especially since the end of the civil war in 1970, the resources have come from the production and exportation of oil found mostly in the new ravaged Niger Delta.  Since the elite is rabidly corrupt and largely unproductive, it required undemocratic mechanisms to control the communities so that it could cheat them out of its resources.  This is exactly what is behind the numerous dubious and diabolical revenue sharing arrangements, the undemocratic power arrangements, and the robust alliance between the military and the Nigerian power elite.  For those that have come to locate their visibility, accumulation, opportunities, and power at the center and the ability of that center to control oil resources, the devolution of power or refederalization is hardly on the political agenda.  As is the case with Olusegun Obasanjo since May 1999, it is easier to harass the governors, threaten martial law or state of emergency, issue shoot-on-sight orders to the police, set up commissions that are designed to keep the status quo, and refuse to open up the constitution review process to the people of Nigeria.
As was to be expected, the combination of the contradictions above have generated more agitations and conflicts for and over power sharing as restless minority communities, especially in the Middle Belt and Niger Delta continued to make strident demands for the right to be involved in decision making and in the governance of the country.
Militarization and Defederalization
It will not be wrong to conclude that the military has practically ruined the political future of Nigeria.  Of course, it is still possible to correct the terrible legacies of military brutality, mismanagement, corruption, and negative politicking.  With the first intervention in politics in 1966, the military not only set the basis for eroding all structures and features of federalism but also began to build new authoritarian structures and attitudes derived from its grossly undemocratic, intolerant, and commandist nature and structure.  Though the military once again retired to the barracks in May 1999, today, Nigeria is certainly less united and peaceful.  Yet, if the military created several states and local governments, introduced a new anthem and pledge, created a new capital, constructed some highways (without feeder roads), and created more multimillionaires, it failed woefully to reassure minorities and other disadvantaged communities that there was a future for them in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.  More Nigerians have been killed in peacetime under the military than ever.  Religious, ethnic, and class-based riots have become part of everyday life only because the military was insensitive to the demands of nationality groups.  More often than not, it treated such demands as irritants and relied on repression, co-optation, violence, and temporary measures to deal with agitations for increased minority participation in power structures and the return to true federalism.
By “defederalization” we refer to the process of making unitary what was once federal.  In other words, defederalization is a deliberate process of eroding or dismantling a federal system and replacing it with a unitary arrangement.  The military not only concentrated power in itself and the center, but also ensured that the states were reduced to mere administrative units taking orders from the center.  The excessive centralization of power, resources, and opportunities also encouraged the rise of authoritarianism and other forms of despotic rule, and the negation of democratic values.  As well, the personalization of power and politics under the military was made possible by the centralization of power and resources at the center.  Hence, under the Generals Babangida and Abacha juntas for example, Nigeria was perceived or discussed in terms of their personal whims and caprices.   Relying on violence and intimidation, the military arrangement introduced all sorts of undemocratic values, reified existing contradictions, generated new conflicts, and negated the fledgling democratic platforms that were emerging in the first republic.  The reliance on decrees that oust the jurisdiction of the law courts and by disrespecting existing social and cultural institutions, the Nigerian military destroyed possibilities for inter-ethnic harmony; nation-building opportunities, and platforms of pluralism and tolerance within and between nationality groups.  It was not unusual, especially under the Abacha junta that the top ten senior positions in the country were all occupied by persons from the same ethnic and/or religious group.  As Pini Jason has aptly noted, the Abacha junta
…in a space of five years removed every remaining semblance of Federalism from the governance of the nation.  Being no respecter of any rules, he reduced the affairs of the state to a conspiracy, an affair between himself and few trusted locals.  If you were not from Kano or of Kanuri or Lebanese extraction, you didn’t qualify for any worthy post.  Those who were allowed at the outer peripheries of power were either those who did him favours or those who did his dirty jobs.  In such a situation, it was very easy not to see the problems of Nigeria beyond the needs of Abacha and his acolytes and courtiers.iii
Furthermore, according to Jason, the military, in total disregard for the principles of federalism and as evidence of insensitivity to the need for equal representation in the country’s power structures, went all out to concentrate power in the hands of a particular ethnic group.  The situation under the Abacha junta serves as a typical example:
Let’s take a typical situation for example.  Were Abacha to desire an advice on the legal situation of Chief Abiola’s pending case in the Supreme Court, he would have had in attendance, his Special Adviser on Legal matters Professor Anwalu Yadudu, Attorney-General, Alhaji Abdulahi Ibrahim, the Chief Justice, Muhammed Uwais, National Security Adviser, Alhaji Ismaila Gwarzo, his Chief Security Officer, Major Hamza el-Mustapha, the Director-General of Military Intelligence, Brigadier Sabo Mohammed and perhaps, the Secretary to the Federal Government, Alhaji Gidado Idris… But tell me, where can you locate anything “federal” in this assemblage?  If you say that this group, most probably conducting their strategy meeting in vernacular, would not be tempted to see the matter as an us versus them, you are probably lying.  If it concerned labour unions, you would add the Minister of Labour, Alhaji Ahmed Gasua and you would end up with the same unfederal assembly!  If he summoned the Inspector-General of Police, the Deputy IG, AIGs and Commissioners of Police, you would still have the same sectional assembly and sectional solutions to a federal problem.  There is nothing equally federal in a situation where people from one section of the country are solely in control of all the border posts of the immigration, and almost all the area administrators of the customs.  That simply amounts to deliberately holding the rest under siege.iv
The situation described above, reflecting a situation of near absolute defederalization, is not imaginary.  All protests against this “unfederal” development were met with unmediated repression.  This tactic drove opposition elements abroad or forced them to generate more militant and political programs for engaging the neocolonial state.  The fact that the non-hegemonic military-dominated state was incapable of instituting a truly inclusive and democratic system has become rather obvious to minorities in the country.  This realization is what has increased the militant agitations for autonomy and local control over local resources.  The national gyrations of state creation led to the emergence of states that were not viable and only ended up in strengthening the central government on which they were all totally dependent for revenues.  In any case, each new state generated its own minority question and thus compounded the sites of contradictions and conflicts all over the country.  To the extent that the control of power was still coterminous with accumulation and the definition of self-worth, those that dominated the state continued to monopolize it at the expense of power sharing options.
Under the military, Nigeria became a federal state in name only.  All power came from Lagos or later, Abuja.  All opportunities came from Abuja.  All major contracts came from Abuja or from the offices of the representatives of the Commander-in-Chief in the various states.  All Decrees came from Abuja and yet, the “lord” in Abuja was not elected by any one and was not accountable to anyone.  The almighty federal government paid the salaries of primary school teachers in the states.  It constructed and repaired roads in the states and supplied drugs to state owned hospitals.  In the days of General Abacha, a super federal government agency, the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) was even established to perform the task of several federal and state ministries.  Those that were shut out of power had no choice than to either toe the established line or exist on the fringes of power.  Central planning became the ideological basis for growth and accumulation though it was hardly accompanied by any clear-cut ideological frameworks for combating dependence, underdevelopment, and instability.  The so-called mixed economy became an excuse for using public funds to subsidize the confused accumulative strategies of an equally confused political elite.  The state was turned into the accumulative machine of the bourgeois class.  As they looted the state, largely aware that they could not be probed under a junta that was accountable to no one, they tightened their control over the state, its institutions and resources and did everything possible to keep others out.  This generated deeper contradictions not only within and between nationality groups, but more specifically between elites that felt shut out of power and those that dominated power.  This was also acted out within the military as coups and counter-coups became avenues for expressing the misguided ambitions of some military officers as well as a strategy for contesting the power space.  The Majors Saliba Mukoro and Gideon Orka coup of April 1990 that was ostensibly executed on behalf of the Christians and southern states of the country was a typical example of this trend.
The advent of military rule, therefore, represented a major assault on Nigerian federalism.  In fact, federalism was summarily abolished as powers hitherto guaranteed to the regions were abolished or gradually taken over by the federal government.  The very first misguided assault on Nigerian federalism by the military, in a direct sense, was when General Aguyi Ironsi promulgated Decrees No. 33 and 34 of May 24, 1966 abolishing federalism and replacing it with a unitary form of government.  Thus “National Government” was to replace “Federal Government” in this new political adventure of trying to force unity on Nigerians without the adequate political arrangements even as Ironsi was seen as favoring the Ibo ethnic group in his appointments and policies.  Of course, this only gave further impetus to the contradictions that eventually culminated in a civil war that led to the death of millions of Nigerians.  Given that the constitution had been suspended, regional parliaments abolished as were political parties, all powers were now concentrated in the so-called “supreme headquarters” in the person of the “Commander-in-Chief “ and head of the Supreme Military Council (SMC).    Regional police forces were abolished, the military commands were centralized, education became a federal affair, and all-important appointments at the state levels by state military governors reflected a set pattern of politics dictated by the military head of state.
Finally, on the military, it has completely destroyed the fabric of Nigerian federalism thus making it an almost insurmountable challenge for post-military democratic governments to reclaim lost ground.  This is so because in the last three decades and more, most of the civilian elements that now occupy the seat of power in the new Obasanjo dispensation were virtually made by and under the military.  The world-view and attitudes that they carry, more frequently than not, reflect the culture of military authoritarianism.  To be sure, part of the explanation can be found in the historical origins of the Nigerian military: a force created by the undemocratic colonial state to visit violence on the peoples of Nigeria.  On seizing power it saw the Nigerian social formation as a huge barrack under the command of the Commander-in-Chief with “obey before complain” as its philosophy of governance, and thus incapable of grappling with Nigeria’s robust and vibrant, even quarrelsome civil society.  Believing in legitimation (or compliance) by repression, the commandist, repressive, insensitive, and undemocratic character of Nigeria’s military juntas have precipitated an almost firm condition where power is dominated directly by the military retired and/or active, or by surrogates of the military.
Constitutions without Constitutionalism: Recompacting the Political Space.
Nigeria has never has a truly democratic constitution.  To be sure, the country has had legal constitutions, but they have hardly been legitimate.  The country has never adopted a participatory or process-led approach involving the various nationality groups and the various communities, constituencies and interests that make up the country in compacting its constitutions.  It has consistently been elite-driven with the state playing a critical role in determining the content of the final document.  It is no wonder that the constitutions have hardly served as coherent compacts for determining the relationship between the ruled and the rulers and none has been able to ensure the rule of law and popular participation much less transparency, accountability, and social justice.  Nigerian constitutions have been opportunistic documents designed to perpetrate what could be regarded as a political fraud on the nationalities of Nigeria in particular minority groups and non-bourgeois constituencies.  Finally, Nigerian constitutions have never been instruments for ensuring the survival of the democratic project neither have they prevented nor discouraged the subversion of the democratic enterprise by the military.  More so, the constitutions have not empowered the Nigerian people to have access to the structures of power or to the constitution so they can claim ownership of the document and deploy such ownership in the defense of their individual and collective rights.
As indicated above, military rule destroyed the basis of Nigerian federalism.  The concentration of power in the federal government and the commandist nature of military rule turned Nigeria into a pseudo-federal state.  This has turned out to be the basis of agitations for autonomy and political restructuring demanded by the various minority groups, opposition and human rights movements, and ethno-cultural organizations.v  The 1999 constitution hardly demonstrates any sensitivity to these issues.  It hardly pays attention to questions of autonomy or reorganization of political power and though it pays so much attention to power and the definition of power, it is still lopsided in favor of the center.  The states of the federation do not have control over their own resources.  This is still the exclusive preserve of the federal government that has guaranteed only 13% of generated revenues to the states where the resources are generated (see below).  This is no different from the situation under the military where the federal government illegally appropriated the resources of units of the federation and doled out meager portions to them under dubious fiscal arrangements.vi  The debate in the oil-bearing and producing communities of Nigeria has long gone beyond percentages to one of control.  The 1999 constitution could not have been more unrealistic and out of touch.
Under the 1999 constitution, the states cannot set up their own police forces.  The State Police Force (SPF) is only a branch of the federal police force under a federally appointed inspector general of police.  Section 214 (1) is clear on the fact that “There shall be a Police Force for Nigeria, which shall be known as the Nigeria Police Force, and subject to the provisions of this section no other police force shall be established for the Federation or any part thereof.”  According to Section 214 (c), it is the National Assembly that is empowered to “make provisions for branches of the Nigeria Police Force forming part of the armed forces of the Federation….”  And the Commissioner of police for each state “shall be appointed by the Police Service Commission.”   Even more ridiculous in a federal system, is that in the event of a need to maintain or secure public safety and public order within the state, a governor may direct the commissioner of police to take necessary action.  However, according to section 215 (4), “before carrying out any such directions…the Commissioner of Police may request that the matter be referred to the President or such Minister of the Government of the Federation as may be authorized in that behalf by the President for his direction.”  After Nigeria’s experience in the first republic, and given the bitter partisan quarrels that accompanied the 1998-99 elections, the federal government can hardly be regarded as not being partisan much less interested in objectively responding to crises in states if such crises might weaken the opposing parties.  The federal ministry of education does not just play a supervisory role; it also dictates policy to the state departments of education.vii  In fact, one of the first acts of General Obasanjo as the democratic president of Nigeria was to pay the salaries of striking teachers in the states.  As it turned out, General Obasanjo had illegally appropriated monies belonging to the state governments to perform this magnanimous act for which he took a lot of credit!
Citizens in a state cannot form political parties that are registered in the state and interested in canvassing for support and contesting for office only in the state.  In fact, all parties are to comply with federally dictated requirements and are to be registered with the federal government’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).  This goes directly against the autonomy of the nationalities of the federating units and erodes the ability of states to organize their political interests and processes independently.  In fact, the entire idea of parties being registered by the federal government means that the same federal government could deny registration on the grounds that its requirements have not been met.  Given the experiences of the past, what the 1999 constitution has done is to restrict the formation and operation of political parties to the wealthy.  It is only this wealthy class that can afford the cost of such an exercise.  It also hardly recognizes the fact that not all parties in the world are necessarily set up to win national elections.  This would continue to anger the minorities, the opposition groups, and locally based politicians.  As Balarabe Musa has already argued, “…the idea of party registration is undemocratic.  For instance, during the last election, we saw a situation whereby only people who had money and who could afford to buy votes, were able to contest and win elections.”viii  In other words, the cumbersome, expensive, and intrusive federal government requirements for party formation and registration is a direct way of encouraging corruption, elite-dominated politics, and the continuing marginalization of persons without connections with the wealthy in the political process.  The 1999 constitution negates a cardinal pillar of federalism by denying Nigerians the right to form political parties at any level they wish and by doing so, it subverts creativity at the local level by forcing it into the complex, corrupt and often compromised vortex of national politics.
Because the state wishes to continue the concentration of power at the center, it has avoided a direct engagement of the nationality issue.  Thus it tries to forge a non-existent sense of nationhood by forcing political parties to adopt superficial national symbols in their logos, names, and presence in geographical spaces.  The reality is that these can (and have) been done without a true commitment to unity and the integration of political interests and objectives.  Most political parties that have described themselves as “national” in Nigeria’s history have been dominated by power elites from the North, East or West.  Denying the nationality question is tantamount to postponing the evil day for Nigeria because the degree of political alienation in the country that gave rise to ethnic and regionalist groups like Afenifere and Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), Ijaw Peoples Union, Ahaeze, Middle Belt Forum, Midwest Initiative, Eastern Mandate Union (EMU), Northern Peoples’ Forum, and so on, cannot be wished away through superficial institution building.  Rather, Sections 221-229 stipulate regulations that are federally determined and controlled.  In fact, according to Section 223 (b), “the members of the executive committee or other governing body of the political party must reflect the federal character.”   Section 222 (f) requires political parties to have their headquarters in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.  This is a clear negation of the rights of nationalities to form their own parties, restrict their activities to their states or local governments, and dedicate themselves to the improvement of their particular communities.  In fact, the federal stipulation means that only those that can afford the high cost of party formation at the national level can pursue such an agenda.
In a country with well over 250 distinct ethnic groups with a plethora of distinct languages, the 1999 constitution declares in Section 55 that the language of the national assembly shall be English, Igbo, Hausa, and Yoruba.  This ridiculous and provocative prescription is evidence of the arrogance of power that informs the politics of the custodians of state power in Nigeria: the majority ethnic groups and retired/active military interests.  In their arrogance, they completely ignored the growing militancy, awareness, organization, and demands of the other nationality groups in the country.  Thus, rather than accord all languages equality before isolating those to be used in the National Assembly, the constitution and its civilian and military framers simply ignored non-majority spoken languages in Nigeria.  This attitude reflects the power configuration of the country and exhibits the direct implication for resource control and redistributive politics.
The 1999 constitution retained the vexing issue of the Land Use Act in Section 315 (d).  This Act, passed in 1978 as the Land Use Decree under the previous General Obasanjo regime, has angered minority communities, those that feel margialized from the center of power, and the entire groups and communities in the Niger Delta.  It was the greed to control the oil wealth of the Niger Delta by an unsteady state and an unproductive elite that led to the promulgation of the Land Use Decree.  The decree allowed top military officers, transnational corporations and members of the ruling class to grab large parcels of land at minimal cost in the name of farming.  In fact, following the election of General Obasanjo in 1999, the leading groups in the Niger Delta, including the Ijaw Youth Council, The Chicoco Movement, and the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) met and announced their rejection of his election as president because he was singularly responsible for promulgating the decree that took away their land and vested all oil wealth in the federal government from which they are marginalized.  When President Obasanjo visited the Niger Delta in June 1999 to meet the warring factions, Ijaw activists told him to his face that they still rejected the Land Use Act and the constitution into which it has now been incorporated as it represented a grave injustice and a negation of true federalism.
The various Niger Delta communities and groups have clearly articulated their position, demands, and perspectives on the national question in various documents including the Ogoni Bill of Rights; the Kaiama Declaration, the Ogbia Declaration, and the Ikwerre Rescue Charter.  The positions in these declarations have been endorsed by other democratic groups such as Solidarity Movement of the Southern Minorities of Nigeria, National Conscience Party, Oodua Peoples Congress, Movement for the Survival of Easterners and Niger Deltans, Eastern Nigeria/Delta Unity Association, Women of Nigeria International, and Igbo National Movement to mention a few.  The 1999 constitution not only ignores these documents and demands but actually goes as far as declaring that the provision on the land use act (and those on the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), the public complaints commission, and the national securities agencies) “shall continue to apply and have full effect in accordance with their tenor and to the like extent as any other provisions forming part of this Constitution and shall not be altered or repealed except in accordance with the provisions of section 9 (2) of this Constitution.”  The Land Use Act has been included in the Exclusive Legislative List and would continue to “have effect as Federal Enactment (…)…” This is not only insensitive to the demands of the various groups that have demanded increased control over their lands and other resources, but a clear demonstration of continuing federal domination of the states as had been the case under military regimes.  Without doubt, this would continue to generate pressures, contradictions, and conflicts as alienated groups have made it clear that the repeal of the land use act remains one of their primary objectives.
The 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is anything but federal.ix  One could make the argument that in spite of existing political structures at local, state, and federal levels, the constitution assumes that the military was still in power!  It simply consolidates existing relations of power in favor of the central government.  Section 4, Second Schedule outlines a very long list of Legislative powers.  The “Exclusive Legislative List” is a long shopping list that includes everything with no attempt to bring in the states, much less the local governments.  Part II of the Schedule contains the “Concurrent Legislative List” where both the Federal and the State governments have powers to make laws.  Even here, the central government has the final say on all issues as the National Assembly is declared as the superior power whose laws shall prevail in the case of conflicts.  The Third Schedule lists “Federal Executive Bodies” such as the Code of Conduct Bureau, Council of State, Federal Character Commission, Federal Civil Service Commission, Federal Judicial Service Commission, Independent National Electoral Commission, National Defence Council, National Economic Council, National Judicial Council, National Population Commission, National Security Council, Nigeria Police Council, Police Service Commission, Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission.  These are simply national or federal commissions designed to facilitate federal regulation and control of the states up to the minutest details.  In this context, it has hardly altered existing relations that had reduced the states to mere appendages of the federal government under the various military juntas.  Interestingly, Part II of the Third Schedule lists only four “States’ Executive Bodies”- the State Civil Service Commission, State Independent Electoral Commission, and the State Judicial Service Commission.  The national equivalents, save for the civil service commission, continue to have significant influence in the performance of duties within the states.  Thus, in terms of addressing the demands of prodemocracy groups, human rights organizations, minority communities, the various ethnic associations, women’s movements, the Niger Delta communities, and the widespread calls for political restructuring to return the country to true federalism with regional control over local resources, politics, and economic activities, the 1999 constitution has completely failed to address these issues.  It is strong and long on power, but very weak and short on strengthening civil society, and serving as the basis for mobilizing Nigerians for the construction of a tolerant, inclusive, and democratic project in the next millennium.  The constitution dos not pretend to be the basis for operating a federal system of government.
To drive home its insensitivity to nationality agitations in the country, the constitution has provided very stringent and clearly unattainable conditions for amendments, state and local government creation, and boundary adjustments.  What it wants to do is preserve the current structures that favor the majority nationality groups and silence the yearnings of the minorities.  This also translats directly to majority control over national resources within the excessively centralized power structures.  For instance, to create a new state, Section 8(1) of Chapter 1 provides that an Act of the National Assembly shall be passed only if a request is supported by at last two-thirds majority of members representing the area demanding the new state in the Senate and House of Representatives, the house of assembly in the state concerned, local government councils in the area concerned, a referendum approved by at least two-thirds majority of the people in the area where the demand originated, the result of the referendum is approved by simple majority of all states of the federation through a simply majority of members of the houses of assembly, and finally the referendum result is approved by a resolution  passed by two-thirds majority of members of each house of the national assembly.   Aside from the scary financial implications involved in this circuitous process, the framers of the 1999 constitution knew very well that intra-party conflicts and competition, personality cashes, ethnic and religious as well as regional suspicious would make this process useless to the task of state creation.  Clearly, the requirements already work in favor of the majority groups that already dominate or control power and resources in the current structures that the framers of the constitution appear determined to preserve.
Conclusion: Towards true Federalism and Constitutionalism
The character of a dominant elite is critical to the restructuring of political spaces and relations.  A dominant elite with a holistic world-view would always appreciate the value of dialogue, negotiation, and compromise in the interest of the larger national project.  As well, it would recognize that in politics, concessions do not necessarily mean defeat.  As well, the ability to build new networks and platforms of politics in the interest of advancing the cause of democracy and expanding the foundations of pluralism is directly related to the structure of class relations and the patterns of capital accumulation.  Unfortunately, for Nigeria, it fails at all points of interrogation.  The elite is still factionalized and fractionalized.  Its national project is still heavily mediated by primordial considerations, loose alliances, political irresponsibility, and a seemingly pathological fixation on primitive accumulation.  Its regard for civil society is opportunistic and tendentious.  Its commitment to a national project is shallow.  Its relationship to the state is opportunistic as it uses it to enhance accumulation even at the cost of destabilizing it.  Finally, the Nigerian bourgeoisie remains impatient with democracy, sees politics as a business in which you invest and reap quadruple rewards, and sees the ordinary Nigerian as an object of manipulation in the political process.
Clearly, such an elite is incapable to constructing the necessary political structures to support a truly democratic project.  This is unfortunate for Nigeria where the experiences of the past, especially the civil war (1967-70) created opportunities for redefining and recompacting political relations.  Furthermore, consistent and articulate agitations by popular groups since 1960 have produced some of the most creative political prescriptions for inclusion, tolerance, accountability, and political restructuring in Africa.  The power elite, especially its fraction that dominates the state, has simply opted to ignore these prescriptions.  More than anything, this elite has preferred superficial tinkering with political reforms.  This situation has not been helped by the advent of the military that introduced an arrogance of power and gave the political elite a feeling of invisibility.  Even then, contestations within and between political constituencies since political independence have also exposed the fragility of the state and its limited ability to consolidate the occasional engagements with democracy.  The corruption and breakdown of governance that accompanied military rule, especially under the Generals Babangida and Abacha juntas easily reified corruption and curtailed the ability of the elite to effectively or seriously negotiate the contours of the country’s complex political terrain.  The net result of these and other features of Nigeria’s distinctive political economy is that political restructuring has become part of national contestations and discourses.  Yet, the character of the state and its custodians remain an obstacle to very much needed national dialogues, much less negotiations for reform.
The option open to the Nigerian state today is to go very far beyond the so-called “Presidential Technical Committee to Review the 1999 Constitution” that has adopted an opportunistic, short term, and non-consultative approach to reviewing the constitution.  The process of constitution making must, in some sense, be seen as an effort at reconstructing or remolding the soul of the nation, and an effort at compacting a peace treaty between and within the various nationalities.  It must be a truly open, transparent, accountable, inclusive, and participatory process with the capacity to engage all communities and constituencies.  Such a process must bring in all groups and give them an opportunity, to become part of constructing such a national project.  The depth of existing contradictions has taken this initiative beyond what the political parties or national assembly can handle.    Nigeria would do well to learn from recent experiences and processes in Uganda, South Africa, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe where the emphasis is on the process as well as on ways to not just use constitution making to address the questions of ethnicity, political structure, identity, leadership and so on, but also as a way of generating a document that would be owned by the people and used to defend the democratic enterprise.
Given the present levels of contradictions, negative coalitions, suspicions, violence, and direct challenges to the already tenuous legitimacy of the state, the Olusegun Obasanjo government would be swept off the political scene if it fails to adopt an open, inclusive and participatory approach to recompact the foundations of governance.  This would be the only way to build democratic legitimacy, strengthen political institutions, reopen closed political spaces, and enhance the struggle to consolidate democracy.  The current strategy of piece-meal, aloof, elite-driven, and superficial efforts at consulting the people wold culminate once again in sidetracking the issues and a missed opportunity to establish minimum political platforms of agreement and mobilizing the Nigerian people in a true federal political system.
Endnotes
* A version of this paper focusing on federalism, power and revenue sharing was presented at a conference on consolidating Nigerian democracy in Lisbon, Portugal, September 20-25, 1999.

i Chief Obafemi Awolowo quoted in Ken Saro-Wiwa, A Month and a Day- A Detention Diary (London: Penguin Books, 10995), p. 63.