Restructuring In Nigeria: Why? How? When?, By Attahiru M. Jega
13 min read
Effort and energies need to be devoted to generating an elite, if not a national, consensus on the necessity of restructuring, defined as the redistribution of power and resources from the federal to the state governments, to be embarked upon before 2023. The embedded imbalance, inequities and perceived injustices in the current federal system in Nigeria have to be addressed as soon as possible to enable Nigeria and Nigerians to acquire the requisite stability and peaceful coexistence…
Introduction
Federalism is the principle, some would say a conceptual or institutional framework, which defines “the division of authority among national and subnational governments” in a given country (Rozell and Wilcox 2019). Such a country is referred to as a federation, or as operating a federal system. Regardless of whether the subnational governments were priorly independent and came voluntarily to form/create a federation, or federal system, or they were compelled by historical circumstances and forced into such a union, the subnational governments have, by legal, constitutional arrangement, become the ‘federating units”, which have coordinate, or shared, responsibilities with the national government.