UNITY IN DIVERSITY

UNITY IN DIVERSITY: Historical perspective of the United States Constitution


A Showcase for the Struggling Nigerian Federalism





INTRODUCTION

The creation of the country called Nigeria by Britain in 1914 has led to over fifty years of conflict and bloodshed. Ever since independence from Britain in 1960 the African nation of Nigeria has been torn apart by wars, violence and ethnic conflict. The most famous of these disputes is of course the Biafran War which raged for nearly three years in 1967-70 as a result of the attempted secession from Nigeria by three eastern states. Nigeria has also undergone several periods of military rule. Today it is free of this. However, the situation is as unstable as ever and violence, corruption and poverty abound. The instability and confusion of this region can only be understood by starting at the beginning of the story. This is not, as it might seem, 1960 when Nigeria was granted independence from Britain. In fact, many of the conflicts which rage today have their roots in the events which took place whilst Nigeria was under British colonial rule from 1901 to 1960. While it is important to understand the historical formation of Nigeria, for the purpose of this study, I will focus a greater part of the study on discussing the solutions to the evil of this colonial past. I will therefore, offer some practical solutions towards unifying Nigeria with formation of a “union” through a “Constitutional Conference of Compromise (CCC) as a starting point.

I will also discuss the United States’ evolution from the thirteen colonial states to a super world federal nation. This part of the paper is most relevant to the need of the present-day Nigerian leaders to learn from the struggle of the American founders to lay the foundation of the most stable and prosperous federalism in the world. This part of the thesis will show how the Nigerian, independence leaders failed in their vision for a true federalism. Their failures haunt the country to this day.

There are valuable lessons in American history for Nigeria:

“The (American) Revolution was in the minds and heart of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations … This radical change in the principles, options, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution.”

“It was an elevating, transforming vision: a new, fresh, vigorous, and above all morally regenerate people rising from obscurity to defend the battlements of liberty and then in triumph standing forth, hearing and sustaining the cause of freedom everywhere. In the light of sxuch a conception everything about the colonies and their controversy with the mother country took on a new appearance. Provincialism was gone … What were once felt to be defects – isolation, institutional simplicity, primitiveness of manners, multiplicity of religions, weakness in the authority of the state – could now be seen as virtues …”

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PART ONE

LITERATURE REVIEW

Before 1914, the country called Nigeria did not exist. In its place was a hugely diverse scattering of tribes and communities, some of whom had territory that overlaps the borders of present-day Nigeria. These varied groups with different languages, cultures and political practices were all brought together under British rule to form an entirely artificial nation. The arbitrary drawing of borders in the 19th century which was so common to Africa in colonial times paid little attention to the natural ethnic lines of the tribes. Whilst the Western world regarded them all as “Nigerians”, they considered themselves as primarily members of whichever tribe from which they originated.

Despite its federal status, Nigeria is usually characterized as a deeply divided state in which major political issues are vigorously – some would say violently – contested along the lines of the complex ethnic, religious, and regional divisions in the country The issues that have generated the fiercest contestation include those that are considered fundamental to the existence and legitimacy of a state in Nigeria; competing groups tend to adopt exclusionary, winner-take-all strategies. These areas of conflict include the control of state power, resource allocation, and citizenship. As a consequence, today deeply divided states tend to be fragile and unstable, because, there are fewer points of convergence and consensus among the constituent groups than are needed to effectively mitigate or contain the centrifugal forces that tear the society apart.

By virtue of its complex web of politically salient identities and its history of chronic and seemingly intractable conflicts and instability, Nigeria can be rightly described as one of the most deeply divided states in Africa. From its inception as a colonial state, Nigeria has faced a perennial crisis of territorial or state legitimacy, which has often challenged efforts at national cohesion, democratization, stability and economic transformation. The boiling point of the crisis seemed to be the civil war in the late 1960s, which ensued shortly after independence in 1960. However, rather than abate, conflicts have become more or less pervasive and intense in the post-civil war period, and disintegration continues to be contemplated by aggrieved segments of society as one of the possible ways of resolving the national question. This means that the consequences of Nigeria’s diversity in an unstable political context remain as dire as ever.

Nigeria presents a complex crisscrossing of identities with the ethnic, religious, regional and sub-ethnic (communal), being the most salient and the main bases for violent conflicts in the country. Citizens often have dual identities: those for political purposes and those implicated in day-to-day contestations over citizenship, resources and privileges. To emphasize the inter-connectedness of ethnic, regional, and religious identities and the fact that they are often mutually reinforcing, they are sometimes compounded or hyphenated as ethno-regional and ethno-religious have historical, geographical and political origins. They evolved from the old regional structures of the Nigerian federation, where identities were shaped by leaders of the dominant ethnic groups – Hausa/Fulani in the Northern region (predominantly Muslim), Igbo in the Eastern region and Yoruba in the Western region. They exercised some form of hegemonic control over the regions. As a result, ethno-regional identities were, and continue to be, used as shorthand references to the dominant ethnic groups acting as regional “nuclei”. Thus, conflicts among the three dominant groups are generally referred to as ethno-regional. With the division of the country into six semi-official geo-political zones in the late 1990s, which not only have ethnic referents but have also gained currency in the political lexicon, the usage of ethno-regional categories is likely to expand, but so far the tripartite regional references remain dominant.

In the recent past, other ‘primordial’ identities that have gained wide currency and greater political significance, especially in contestations over citizenship, are those of indigenes, non-indigenes, migrants, and settlers. These categories have ethnic, communal, religious and regional origins, and have evolved from an entrenched system of discriminatory practices in which non-indigenes, migrants and settlers are shunted out or denied equal access to the resources, rights and privileges of a locality, community, town or state, to which “sons and daughters of the soil” have first or exclusionary access. The system produces and sustains a hierarchical, unequal, and ranked system of citizenship that has provoked violent conflicts all over the country, and goes to the very heart of the National Question.

Although these competing identities have grown in significance in the recent past, which obviously has to do with the aggravation of the National Question, they have deep historical roots in pre-colonial patterns of inter-group relations, and the discriminatory practices and ethnic inequalities entrenched by the colonial regime and continued by post-independence administrations. These have cumulatively provoked various forms of self-determination agitation by different groups. The country's history since independence suggests that Nigeria’s federal system and politics are deeply flawed, resulting in the rising violence, economic instability and poverty.

PART TWO

PRE-COLONIAL NIGERIAN STATES, POLITICS, AND ECONOMY

Toyin Falola History of Nigeria, 1999, pp 17 – 27





Pre-colonial states



Brass items in Bida, brass and copper heads in Ile-Ife and Benin, bronze products in Igbo-Ukwu, terra cotta animals in Borno, terra cotta heads in Nok, and quartz, basalt, granite, and chalcedony tools dating to the Oldowan and Acheulian age scattered in different locations: all these are among the spectacular archaeological findings that have confirmed the evidence of indigenous societies in Nigeria during prehistoric times.

All groups record the accounts of their past in creation myths and oral traditions, thus providing sources to complement archaeology and other evidence. Many traditions try to answer the question of origin by providing stories of migration either from within Nigeria or distant places such as Egypt and Palestine. Some traditions claim that their ancestors descended on a chain from heaven. Everywhere, there are stories of how ancestors and dynasties emerged, how wars were fought and won or lost, and how people traded and created a living. The stories may sound simple or incredible, but they generally reveal a number of points: that societies had existed for so long that tracing their beginning can be difficult; that societies had to cope with their environment and develop on the basis of their own initiatives; and that one group had to interact with others, as the migration stories point to important linkages. To illustrate these stories with one example, the Hausa who live in the north of Nigeria date their beginning to one Bayajidda, a prince of Baghdad who traveled to Daura in Hausaland to marry its queen. The prince and the queen gave birth to seven "true" Hausa city-states, known as the Hausa Bakwai -- Biram, Katsina, Daura, Zaria, Rano, Kano, and Gobir. The legend also said that Bayajidda had another set of seven illegitimate children who founded the Banza Bakwai ("bastard") states of Zamfara, Gwari, Kebbi, Nupe, Yauri, "Yoruba," and Kwararafa. This is a legend of the migration of a powerful group transforming an autochthonous population. By the fifteenth century, these small city-states had grown into respectably-sized kingdoms, each with a principal city, the birni, serving as the center of power, commerce, culture, and the military.

Pre-colonial Nigeria was made up of many states, small and large, with various forms of governments. To the north, in the northern savanna, was Kanem-Borno, located around Lake Chad. This empire had become powerful by the eighth century A.D., and was one of the earliest to benefit from links with North Africa. Controlled by the Sefawa dynasty until the nineteenth century, the empire was famous for its adoption of Islam, its commercial networks, and its military technology. The Sefawa kings, known as the Mai, were very powerful and they engaged in many wars of expansion and consolidation. Among the best known of the Mai was Idris Alooma. (c. 1571-1603) who built a formidable army, including both infantry and cavalry, to subdue many areas and destroy pockets of resistance to his empire. Alooma was credited with the introduction of muskets to the region, in addition to paying for Turkish musketeers to train his army. He was a Muslim who promoted Islam among his people and forged productive diplomatic relations with Muslim rulers in North Africa. He undertook the pilgrimage to Mecca, introduced the Shari'a law, promoted Islamic learning, and built many mosques. His empire grew wealthy, due to established agriculture and longdistance trade. The ability of this empire and its dynasty to survive for so long (over a thousand years) owed much to the quality of its leadership, the efficiency of its political system, the rewarding participation in the trans-Saharan trade, the strength of its army, and the use of Islam to promote unity among its people and organize the administration.

By the thirteenth century, a host of Hausa kingdoms such as Gobir, Kebbi, Zaria, Kano, and Katsina had also emerged, thanks to a viable agriculture and trade. South of the Hausa states and Kanem-Borno is the area now known as the country's Middle Belt, sparsely populated and with many small states. However, the Middle Belt is a zone of ancient civilizations with advanced technologies and cultures. Here was the home of the Nok culture and the Jukun empire, and of riverain groups such as the Idoma, Igala, Tiv, Bussa, Ebira, Nupe, and Bariba, all of whom attained prominence. Around the Niger-Benue confluence there was a cluster of groups, Yoruba, Nupe, Tiv, and Igala, who interacted with one another to promote trade and diplomacy.

In the forest and the Niger Delta was a variety of great kingdoms and small states. The coastal area had a high population density, and some states in this area as well as the forest were politically fragmented, as in the case of the Igbo in the southeast. In the Niger Delta, such city-states as Bonny, Brass, and Calabar were famous for their control of the river and the coast, as well as for their trade with Europeans. Islam did not penetrate the forest region until very late. Valuable crops were produced, notably kola nuts, fish, and sea salt, all of which became part of longdistance trade. Trade routes also connected the forest with the savanna; they connected the Yoruba in the west with their northern neighbors, and the trading communities along the rivers Niger and Benue with each other.

Calabar Kingdom also known as Efik Kingdom is an Ancient Kingdom that existed thousands of years before Christ. The City of Calabar was the seat of power of the Calabar Kingdom. The old Calabar Kingdom was composed of loosely governed states. The states included: Annang, Akamkpa, Efik, Eket, Ibibio, Ikom, Ogoja, (Opobo, now Ikot Abasi), Oron, Western Camaroon and the offshore island of Fernando Po (now Equatorial Guinea). Calabar was (and still is) the capital city of the Efik State of the old Calabar Kingdom. As such, the Kingdom has been known as either Calabar Kingdom or Efik Kingdom. Calabar Kingdom was an active ancient trading kingdom. Recorded history shows that the Calabar Kingdom was the first Kingdom to use a money system in trading in West Africa. The ancient money of Calabar Kingdom was called "Okpoho", a Calabar word for money. This money become known as the Manillas. The Kingdom was ruled by Kings with the King of Calabar as the High King. Several years after the Kingdom became a British colony, there was an agreement between the British and the Kings in 1908 abrogating the title of King, and replacing it with the title - Obong. Thus, as Calabar Kingdom became a British colony, the British saw it necessary to not duplicate the title of the monarch (the King or Queen - of England) in their colony. The High King (King of Calabar later known as Obong of Calabar till this present time), had a strong power in the capital City of Calabar in the Efik State with weak power over the other states in the Kingdom. Leadership power in the Calabar Kingdom was derived from a major secret society, the Ekpe Secrete Society. The Ekpe secret society was instrumental in keeping outsiders (other ethnic groups) outside of the Kingdom and in protecting the sovereignty of the Kingdom.



The most powerful state in the south was the Yoruba empire of Oyo which was famous by the sixteenth century. Its early history goes back to an ancient period connected with Oduduwa, the progenitor of the Yoruba people. Oral history either says that Oduduwa descended from heaven to Ile-Ife or arrived there from the northeast. His descendants founded seven kingdoms, including Oyo, which became the most influential political power. Early rulers of Oyo laid the foundation of the kingdom by dominating their neighbors and establishing an effective monarchical system. One early ruler, Sango, was deified as a god of thunder and lightning. Oyo's rise to fame was due to a combination of factors. To start with, its geographical location between the River Niger and the northern edge of the forest enabled Oyo to control the leading Yoruba trade routes north to Hausaland and north-west to the Niger bend. It was able to play the role of a middleman to the Yoruba hinterland, and secure access to horses for itself. It was also successful in creating a formidable military machine, based on cavalry, and its administration was intelligently structured. Successful conquests brought in tribute and created a huge market for Oyo's goods. A strong system of administration was able to unite different groups and generate strong nationalism among the Yoruba living in the capital. At its peak during the eighteenth century, Oyo included a large area of Yorubaland, part of Nupeland, and parts of Borgu and what is now the Republic of Benin. The Aja and Ewe states to the southwest were forced to pay tribute to it. Oyo entered the eighteenth century as a strong power, the largest and most diverse in southern Nigeria. Troubles started in the second half of the century, and in spite of the prosperity during the 1770s, it never fully recovered.

Yet another great empire in southern Nigeria was Benin, one of the earliest to rise in the coastal area. It had become powerful by the fourteenth century. Created by the Edo group, Benin was highly centralized and its monarchy survived until its conquest by the British in 1897. Before c. 1400, Benin's rulers were known as the Ogiso. Then, a dynasty was established by a certain Eweka who, according to tradition, was influenced by the Yoruba. He chose the title of Oba (king) and established the institution of seven kingmakers. In later years, powerful Obas emerged and assumed sacred characteristics. The idea of monarchy adopted by the Edo favored a centralized political system which unified divided groups. The monarchy controlled all key appointments, and was able to manage competing interests through a reward system which enabled the king to promote or give resources to those who were loyal to him. Benin profited from its association with its Yoruba neighbors, borrowing useful ideas from them to reform its politics and economy. It also enjoyed a long period of peace because many of its neighbors were small and militarily weak. Benin was well connected in terms of regional trade and was able thereby to acquire wealth to finance its army and administration. Benin reached the height of its power during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with Oba Ewuare (c. 1440-1473) as the most prominent ruler of the era. Ewuare was able to end domestic political rivalries among members of the royal house and chiefs, add to the power of the king, rebuild the city and expand its defensive walls, and create a strong army. Other able successors added to these achievements, including Oba Ozolua, who reigned at the end of the fifteenth century. Ozolua, a warrior-king, expanded the empire and established its first contacts with the Portuguese. Trade began between the two, further promoted by diplomatic relations. In later years, the trade was expanded, allowing Benin to buy imported guns which served its interests in expansionist wars.

Centralized States

Irrespective of their locations, states can be classified into two types: the centralized and the non-centralized. A centralized state is a large political unit, its territory increasing and reducing on the basis of military strength. Such a state in pre-colonial Nigeria would be controlled by a powerful king and his chiefs, based in the capital city of the state where the palace and major market were located. In this capital, the king exercised direct control while allowing heads of kinship groups to govern their various wards. The state was divided into provinces, each admin- istered by a chief loyal to the king. A province could have many villages and towns, and also many ethnic groups of people in the case of kingdoms like Oyo. The administration of a province tended to be indirect, to allow local authorities a say, and minimize tension with the central authority. The kings and their chiefs collected taxes, tribute, levies, and gifts to generate a public treasury, while provinces demonstrated their allegiance by regular payment. While the kings and chiefs could grow wealthy, the majority of the citizens engaged in small-scale agriculture. Examples of such states include the kingdoms of Benin, Oyo, and Kanem-Borno.

In the emergence of these powerful states, geography played a prominent role. The land was fertile enough to support agriculture, urbanization, and large population concentrations. Their locations encouraged participation in regional trade, so that they were able to generate wealth from commerce. An astute and strong leader would emerge to embark upon successful wars of conquest. The army was generally large, made up of able-bodied citizens. In the savanna where grazing land was available and the tsetse fly did not constitute a threat, strong cavalry forces developed.

The king was the central figure in politics. The empire-building king would create a dynasty which governed until its power was challenged by rivals or the kingdom collapsed. The empire-builder could be originally a clan head who grew powerful and subordinated other clan heads to his control. In some other cases, a powerful priest would use his control of supernatural power to acquire political authority. In yet other cases, a powerful warrior could suddenly emerge from a weak group and dominate it. Having established power, the empire-builder used an army to expand his territory to include other groups, important markets, and fertile land. His successors inherited the kingdom, and managed it to the extent permitted by customs, checks and balances, and strength of character.

One example of a centralized state in the north was Kanem-Borno. At the head of the administration was the Mai, a king chosen from the Sefawa ruling dynasty. Before Islam, his people regarded him as semidivine, with the attributes of a god. With the introduction of Islam, he combined elements of semi-divine kingship with the attributes of a great Islamic leader. His power was supreme with the judicial right to impose capital punishment. In day-to-day administration, he listened to the advice of his counselors, a council of twelve, each with responsibility over a province. The councilors lived in the capital, and had to appoint junior officers to manage their affairs in the provinces. Women leaders were powerful, especially three of them: the Mai's mother (Magira), the Mai's senior sister (Magara), and the Mai's first wife (Gumsu). Not only was their advice important, they were major power brokers as well. The economic basis of power relied on harvest taxes collected from farmers, poll tax from many people, tolls and customs from traders, and gifts and tribute from the provinces.

In the south, Oyo was also centralized. It developed a political system based on checks and balances among the leading chiefs and the Alaafin (king). The empire was divided into two. The metropolis, Oyo city, was governed by the Alaafin and his leading chiefs. The provinces were administered indirectly; Oyo sent its officers (the Ilari) to supervise local rulers. In the center where power was concentrated, the Alaafin was selected from members of the royal family who descended from Oranyan, the founder of the kingdom. In theory, the Alaafin had absolute power and was regarded as next to the gods. In practice, his power was checked by other leading chiefs. When he died, several people, including his eldest son, were expected to die with him. He was wealthy and he lived in a huge palace. Next in rank to him were the Oyomesi, seven important chiefs, headed by the Basorun. These chiefs enjoyed enormous power, controlling the appointment of a new Alaafin and having the right to request a bad one to commit suicide. To resolve conflicts between the Oyomesi and the Alaafin and also to approve some decisions of the chiefs, there was a secret society called the Ogboni. There was an extensive bureaucracy, comprised of the Ilari who were based in the palace. As an expansionist empire, Oyo had a strong army based on an impressive use of horses under the control of warlords known as the Eso. The overall leader of the army, the Are Ona Kakanfo, was expected to win all his wars or commit suicide.

Non-centralized Societies

The second category of states in pre-colonial Nigeria was the noncentralized ones such as those of the Igbo, Isoko, Urhobo and Ibibio in eastern Nigeria and most states in the Middle Belt. These societies were small-scale in size, generally organized around a village or small town, or into chiefdoms, as among the Isoko and Urhobo. The exercise of power was distributed among elders and associations of young people. The government was decentralized, and there was no need to build strong armies for purposes of expansion. Interest groups within a region could be united by trade with members forming a trading association. The societies were orderly, regulated by sanctions, the power of religion, and the control exercised by clan heads.

A good example of non-centralized societies is provided by the Igbo, who were divided into many patrilineal clans, each with its own founding ancestor. Hundreds of villages existed, not as members of one Igbo kingdom, but as autonomous units, each with its own government. In a typical Igbo village, there was a Council of Elders (the ama-ala) comprising heads of different families and a village assembly where the majority of the public was allowed to engage in free speech and be involved in decision making. The administration of justice was democratic as elders and citizens discussed offenses and the nature of the punishment to be meted out. A secret society carried out a number of law-related activities, while an age-grade association took charge of public works. Providing a measure of unity to many villages, people worshipped similar gods and recognized the authority of a powerful oracle.

The states, whether centralized or not, shared many things in common. Their economy was dependent on agriculture, trade, mining, and manufacturing. Everywhere, people combined "factors of production" -tools, capital, land, and labor-to perform a variety of economic activities. The hoe and the machete were the most common tools used by farmers, while other occupations had their own specific requirements. As tools were manufactured locally, there was no dependence on external technology. As simple as they were, they made large-scale production possible, even well into the twentieth century. Finance was made available through family channels or local savings clubs.

The family was a unit of production. Members lived in the same compound and the head of the compound organized them for economic functions. Wages were not paid, but the basic needs of members were met. A large family was desirable in order to create more hands for work; hence, the practice of polygynous marriages. To secure additional labor, a family could team with others in a cooperative work group, known as the gayya among the Hausa, and aaro or owe among the Yoruba. To the wealthy and powerful, the use of slaves offered opportunities to expand their labor force and acquire more resources. Slaves were integrated into family units and were allowed to regain their freedom after meeting required criteria.

Land was essential to most occupations and the society ensured that all individuals had access to it. Land was a communal property, pro-tected by the political class for the use of all. Every family in a community had its own share, from which it could not be dispossessed. Land could not be sold. As a most valuable asset, it was also sanctified, a way of using religious sanctions to maintain the laws preventing sale. Land was also regarded as belonging to the ancestors, the living, and the yet unborn, thus denying the living the right to part with family land. Strangers were accommodated either through adoption by a host family who would then allow them access to its own land or through land allocation by the ruler.

The main source of livelihood was farming. Agriculture provided a food supply and made possible population expansion and urbanization. In the savanna, pastoralism ensured the integration of large-scale cattle rearing with farming. Pastoralists were nomadic, in search of pasture and water. Due to limited grazing land and the tsetse fly, cattle herding was less common in the forest and coastal areas. Among the communities living along the coast and river banks, fishing was a major activity.

The economy was always diverse and included major mining and manufacturing industries. Producers relied on local resources, supplemented with raw materials obtained from regional trade. In a number of occupations, such as iron working, craftsworkers formed guilds to protect their secrets, ensure high quality, and protect their interests in relations with the political authorities. Mining was possible in areas with iron, gold, salt, tin, and copper. Iron was the most important metal because many tools and weapons depended on it. Where the ore was available, it gave rise to prestigious and sacred groups of miners and smelters. In other places, there were smiths to fashion iron into all kinds of implements. Salt was a major dietary requirement as well as a key commodity in regional trade. Sea salt was obtained in the coastal area by boiling sea water to obtain the salt sediment and in the semi-desert area by leaching saline soils. Gold was a luxury and lucrative item as well as a source of great wealth to political leaders. Tin occurred in shallow deposits in the Jos and Bauchi plateaus and was made into a variety of plates and utensils.

Manufacturing was dependent on different animal, mineral, and vegetable products. The most common manufactures were ceramic and leather objects, textiles, and foodstuffs. Where clay was abundant, skilled craftswomen and men turned it into kitchen utensils, decorative items, and ritual pots. Leather work produced a host of specialists in curing, tanning, and dyeing animal skins for others to turn into bags, cushions, saddle covers, and other valuable goods. The textile industry was widespread, including related occupations involving the production of cotton, yarns, and dyestuffs.

Trade was crucial to indigenous economies. It enabled them to dispose of surpluses, make specialized objects available to a wide range of consumers, and share products of different ecological origins. Widely circulated commodities included salt, iron tools, kola nuts, luxury items, and textiles. Within a community, producers were interdependent-the farmer relied on the blacksmith for tools, and the latter on the former for food. Between the regions, interdependence was also pronounced; for instance, the forest supplied kola nuts to the savanna and the latter supplied animal products in return. Widely circulating currencies and a network of roads ensured a distribution system, although the cost tended to be high. Cloth, metal objects, and cowries were the three major currencies. In Borno to the northeast, cotton strips served as money. In the Niger Delta, iron and copper rods circulated widely. The most common currency was the cowrie shell, favored for its small size, its durability, and the fact that it could not be counterfeited. The currencies enabled wealth to be stored over time, commodities to be priced, and a capital market -- where lenders and creditors could negotiate -- to emerge.

Transportation was either by land or water. The majority of the population traveled by land, carrying their goods with them. In the savanna, pack animals were used, notably the donkey, camel, mule, and ox. The most useful of these animals was the camel, well adapted to desert and semi-desert areas, and able to cope with shortages of water and food. Canoes were used where the sea and rivers provided the opportunity. Both by land and sea, road networks connected various locations and were maintained and protected by different communities.

The marketplace -- a clearly demarcated open space with stalls -- was the major site for transactions. Always large and full of diverse people, the market offered the best opportunity for members of society to interact: to trade, share information, and network. Political authorities also collected dues here to finance the government. A market could either be held on a daily or a periodic basis. Daily markets could be held in the morning or evening and they generally served the needs of people within a town or village and its environs. Periodic markets, on the other hand, were held at intervals of two or more days and they served primarily to collect, stock, and distribute regional products. The periodic markets in a region belonged to a ring, linked by a sequence of operation whereby different towns held markets on different days, thus allowing traders to different markets at different days.

A market could feed a local trading network and/or regional and international networks. The local network was concerned with transactions between town dwellers and the villages in the vicinity. The regional network linked many towns, separated even by great distances, while the international one connected different parts of the Nigerian area to markets elsewhere in the West African region and across the Sahara Desert. Long-distance traders, highly skilled, mobile, and enterprising, controlled the various networks. In many areas, they organized themselves into large caravans with many traders traveling at the same time, paying tolls, and eventually establishing trading colonies.

The various states interacted with one another for many reasons. By and large, most relations were promoted by trade. No state was self sufficient in its needs either of basic items or of luxuries. This is largely a factor of ecological differences. Coastal communities had salt and fish to offer others. The forest had kola nuts traded to the north in exchange for rock salt, horses, and cattle products. Regional markets, with traders from various areas, emerged in many locations and they all served as zones of interaction. Trade routes cut across states, thus uniting many groups in their use and maintenance. The states were equally united by religious, social, and cultural agencies such as age-grade associations, secret societies, marriage ties, and oracle practices. Age-grade associations comprised young people who were born at the same time and initiated into an age set. There were many of those associations in an area, each with its own name and leadership. Membership cut across lineages and villages, thus promoting friendship and interaction, and a strong sense of loyalty. Secret societies members were also drawn from different towns and villages, with members united in secrecy. They had their codes and symbols which they used to forge a productive network in the service of friendship, power, and business. The oracle system was common in the southeast, an impartial judge consulted from far and wide with pronouncements sanctioned by the gods. Inter-group marriages were also common because most cultures prevented marriage within the kinship group. Through marriages, villages and towns were united and their offspring claimed relations in different areas. Through all the factors of inter-group relations, ideas spread, bonds were strengthened, regional trade flourished, and intermarriage was encouraged.





NIGERIAN LANGUAGES

The languages of Nigeria are classified into three broad linguistic groups: Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, and Afro-Asiatic. The huge Niger-Congo group is further subdivided into nine major branches, including the Kwa subgroup, spoken in the extreme southwestern corner of the country; the Ijoid branch, spoken in the Niger Delta region; the Atlantic subgroup, which most notably includes Fula; the extensive Benue-Congo subgroup, which includes Tiv, Jukun, Edo, Igbo, Igala, Idoma, Nupe, Gwari, Yoruba, and several languages of the Cross River basin such as Efik, Ibibio, Anang, and Ekoi; and the Adamawa-Ubangi languages, such as Awak, Waja, Waka, and Tula, spoken in northern Nigeria. The Nilo-Saharan group is represented in Nigeria principally by Kanuri, although speakers of Bagirmi and Zerma are also present in the country. Afro-Asiatic is a much larger linguistic group and comprises Hausa, Margi, and Bade, among others. Some peoples (such as the Fulani and the Tiv) are relatively recent immigrants, but, on the basis of modern linguistic research, it is thought that the great majority of Nigerian languages—specifically the Kwa subgroup—have been spoken in roughly the same locations for some 4,000 years. Hausa was an official language of the northern states from 1951 to 1967. It is the most widely spoken language, although English is the official language of Nigeria. In addition to English, Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Fula, and English Creole are widely spoken. Many of the languages exist in written form.



NIGERIAN RELIGIONS

At the beginning of the 20th century, most Nigerians were followers of traditional religion , but British colonial policies discouraged this to such an extent that by the time of independence in 1960 the great majority of the people were classified as Muslims or Christians. However, many of those professing to be Muslims or Christians also openly performed certain rites or rituals of traditional religions that were no longer condemned as they had been during the colonial period. While a supreme god (called Olorun Olodumare in Yoruba, Chukwu in Igbo, Osalobua in Edo, and Abasi Ibom in Ibibio) is central to many of the traditional religions, the deity is worshipped through a number of intermediaries or lesser gods. The increased politicization of religion by the state, including the adoption of Islamic penal law by several Northern states in the Fourth Republic, has led to the spread of more diversity and more ethno-religious conflicts all over the country. The politicization of Christianity has been largely dependent on the moves made by Muslims and interventions by the state. Following the Iranian Islamic revolution of the 1970s, there was a surge of radical and fundamentalist activities especially among Muslim youths. This was the context within which some fundamentalist Muslim sects, notably the Maitatsine, Izala movement, the Muslim Brothers or Shiites, and most recently the Talibans emerged to demand, amongst others: purist Islam based on Sharia law; the eradication of heretical innovations; and, the establishment of an Islamic state or theocracy. The activities of these sects were a major precipitant of the religious conflicts that proliferated the northern political landscape in the 1980s and 1990s. Most of these involved conflicts between Muslims and Christians, with strong ethnic undertones, but some especially those involving the Izala, also entailed anti-state mobilization. Factors that have accentuated the politicisation of Muslim identities include: state policies and interventions, which Christians allege are pro-Muslim (state sponsorship of pilgrimage to Mecca and membership of the Organization of Islamic Conference - OIC - are cases in point); the attempts to extend Sharia law to the federal level; and the adoption of Sharia law as the basic law by a number of states. Nevertheless, Protestant-Catholic cleavages have been a major factor in elections among the Igbo of the southeast. The Catholic Church, which has Justice and Development Commissions all over the country, in addition to a politically active Bishops Conference and other structures, has been very effective in this regard.



NIGERIA: COLONIZATION

The Sokoto jihad and the Yoruba wars stimulated the slave trade at a time when the British were actively trying to stop it. Slaves formerly had been traded for European goods, especially guns and gunpowder, but now the British encouraged trade in palm oil in the Niger delta states, ostensibly to replace the trade in slaves. They later discovered that the demand for palm oil was in fact stimulating an internal slave trade, because slaves were largely responsible for collecting palm fruits, manufacturing palm oil, and transporting it to the coast, whether by canoe or by human porterage. The palm oil trade was also linked to the Sokoto jihad and the Yoruba wars, because many warriors recognized the importance of slaves not only as soldiers and producers of food to feed soldiers but additionally as producers of palm oil to trade for European dane guns and other goods.

The British annexed Lagos in 1861, but were not yet willing to assume the expense of maintaining an administration in Nigeria. To reduce costs, Lagos was administered first from Freetown in Sierra Leone, along with Gold Coast forts such as Elmina, and later from Accra (in present-day Ghana); only in 1886 did Lagos became a separate colony. A consul was maintained at Fernando Po to oversee the lucrative palm oil trade in the region called the Oil Rivers. Missionaries were active: Presbyterians in Calabar and the Church Missionary Society (CMS), Methodists, and Baptists in Lagos, Abeokuta, Ibadan, Oyo, and Ogbomoso. The CMS pioneered trade on the Niger by encouraging Scottish explorer and merchant Macgregor Laird to run a monthly steamboat, which provided transportation for missionary agents and Sierra Leonean traders going up the Niger.

By the 1870s, the Niger trade was becoming profitable, and a few French companies took notice. French Roman Catholic missionaries, established in Ouidah (Whydah), arrived in Lagos and considered missionary work on the Niger. The British responded to such evidence of rivalry by defending their right to free navigation on the river at the Berlin West Africa Conference of 1884–85. At the same time, George Dashwood Goldie, a British businessman, bought out all French rivals and created the Royal Niger Company (chartered 1886) in order to control trade on the Niger and administer the immense territories of the Sokoto caliphate and Borno. In addition, two other protectorates were declared, one over the Oil Rivers and the other over the hinterland of Lagos, to establish a claim that these areas were also British “spheres of interest.”

The boundaries of the two protectorates and the territories of the Royal Niger Company were difficult to define, but the tension was eased in 1894 when both entities were merged into the Niger Coast Protectorate. Rivalry between the Royal Niger Company and the Lagos Protectorate over the boundary between the emirate of Ilorin and the empire of Ibadan was resolved with the abrogation of the charter of the Royal Niger Company on Jan. 1, 1900, in return for wide mineral concessions.

In the north Frederick Lugard, the first high commissioner of Northern Nigeria, was instrumental in subjugating the Fulani emirs. Some were deposed, some were defeated in battle, and others collaborated. By 1903 the conquest of the emirates was complete. The mud-walled city of Kano was captured in February, and, after a vigorous skirmish at Kotorkwashi, the sultan’s capital, Sokoto, fell the next month. All the territories were now under British control, and the search for an identity began, first as Northern and Southern Nigeria and then with eventual amalgamation.

The British penetration of Nigeria met with various forms of resistance throughout the country. In the south the British had to fight many wars, in particular the wars against the Ijebu (a Yoruba group) in 1892, the Aro of eastern Igboland, and, until 1914, the Aniocha of western Igboland. In the north many emirates did not take military action, but the deposed caliph, Atahiru I, rebelled in 1903. Many Muslims resorted to migration as a form of resistance, a tactic known as the hejira, in which those perceived as infidels are avoided.

Resistance was strong in western Igboland, where a series of wars were waged against the British. The Ekumeku, who were well organized and whose leaders were joined in secrecy oaths, effectively utilized guerrilla tactics to attack the British. Their forces, which were drawn from hundreds of Igbo youth from all parts of the region, created many problems for the British, but the British used forceful tactics and heavy armaments (destroying homes, farms, and roads) to prevail. The Ekumeku, however, became a great source of Igbo nationalism.

NIGERIA AS A COLONY (1901 – 1960)

Nigeria probably had contact with Europeans (Portugese explorers) as early as the 1400s. It was officially colonized on January 1, 1901, when it became a British protectorate, and part of the British Empire. Britain had claim over that region of Africa from 1885 to 1960.

After the British government assumed direct control of the Royal Niger Company’s territories, the northern areas were renamed the “Protectorate of Northern Nigeria”, and the land in the Niger delta and along the lower reaches of the river was added to the Niger Coast Protectorate, which was renamed the “Protectorate of Southern Nigeria’. Lagos remained the capital of the south, with Zungeru the new capital of the north. On Jan. 1, 1914, following the recommendations of Sir Frederick Lugard, the two protectorates were amalgamated to form the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria under a single governor-general resident in Lagos. Between 1919 and 1954 the title reverted to governor. Following Lugard’s success in the north, he set out the principles of the administrative system subsequently institutionalized as “indirect rule.” Essentially, local government was to be left in the hands of the traditional chiefs, subject to the guidance of European officers. Native institutions were utilized and interference with local customs kept to a minimum, although the British did not always understand the local customs. While this system had built-in contradictions, over the years the Nigerian system developed into a sophisticated form of local government, especially in the emirates and under the banner of “native administration,” which became the hallmark of British colonial rule in Africa.

Many changes accompanied British rule: Western education for the southerners, the English language, and Christianity spread during the period; new forms of money, transportation, and communication were developed; and the Nigerian economy became based on the export of cash crops. Areas with lucrative crops such as cacao and peanuts (groundnuts) profited, while many people in different parts of the country had to migrate to work elsewhere as tenant farmers or use their newly acquired education and skills to work in cities as wage earners, traders, and artisans. Two spheres of government emerged, central and local. The central government, presided over by the governor-general and accountable to the secretary for the colonies in London, was more powerful but distant from the people. Local administration, where the colonial citizens typically experienced colonial authority, was based on the policy of indirect rule first developed in the north.

To prevent any united opposition to its authority, the British adopted a divide-and-rule policy, keeping Nigerian groups separate from one another as much as possible. Traditional authorities were co-opted in the north, where the spread of Western education by Christian missionaries was strongly resisted by Muslim leaders. In the south, the British occasionally created a political hierarchy where there had been none before; in most cases they ruled through those who were most malleable, whether these people had held traditional positions of authority or not. Because Western education and Christianity spread rapidly in the south and not in the north, development was much slower in the north, and the growing disparity. Although colonial rule appeared secure in the first two decades of the 20th century, the British struggled to keep control of their Nigerian colony and continued to do so until Nigeria became independent in 1960.

NIGERIA: COLONIAL CONFLICTS



A map of Nigeria showing the locations of some of its ethnic groups. Source: Ethnic Map of Nigeria, http://www.onlinenigeria.com/mapethnic.asp

Before the advent of the colonial master, what is called Nigeria today was made of various independent sovereign states, including the Hausa states of Kano, Zaria, and Gobir; Kanem-Borno; and the Jukun states of Kwararafa, Kona, Pinduga, and Wukari. Smaller kingdoms included those of the Igala, Nupe, and Ebira. Notable in the south were the Yoruba states of Ife and Oyo, the Edo state of Benin, the Itsekiri state of Warri, the Efik state of Calabar, and the Ijo city-states of Nembe, Elem Kalabari. They had their independent organized governments with their distinct social, political and economic structures.

By 1906, Britain took control of western Africa and these sovereign kingdoms were divided into the Colony (i.e., Lagos) and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria and the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria. In 1914 the two regions were amalgamated and the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria was established for British colonial administrative purposes. It is generally agreed that colonialism is the ‘cradle’ of ethnicity in Nigeria and, more specifically, that the politically salient identities evolved within the context of the contemporary Nigerian state.

The advent of colonialism in the late nineteenth century and the subsequent amalgamation of northern and southern Nigeria in 1914 witnessed more migration in response largely to modern economic opportunities in emerging colonial urban centers. Indeed, colonialism was the single most important factor in the crystallization of contemporary identities and identity conflicts in Nigeria.

By cobbling the different Nigerian groups into a culturally artificial political entity for instance, the British stimulated inter-group competition and mobilization for power and resources in the new state, thereby fostering ethnic conflicts. The colonial urban settings were particularly key in the development of ethnic contact, competition, consciousness and organization. characterized these new colonial cities and mining, commercial and administrative centers as “aggregations of tribal unions” because the urban centers encouraged the formation of kinship, lineage or ethnic associations as a means to cushion the insecurity, instability, alienation and competitiveness of colonial urban life. In addition, the British policy of ruling indirectly through indigenous political institutions or native authorities led to the reification of local tribal political institutions and loyalties.

More important, British colonial policy fostered the uneven socioeconomic and political development and mal-integration of the various Nigerian peoples. The more damaging aspects of the British colonial policy of uneven development included the exclusion of Christian missionary activity and the highly prized mission-sponsored schools from the predominantly Muslim areas of the north , thereby creating a huge imbalance in westernization between north and south, which continues to haunt the federation; the discouragement of any official political contact between north and south until 1947, when politicians from the two regions sat together for the first time in the central legislative council; the official promotion of segregated residential settlement patterns – the so-called sabon gari or strangers’ quarters to which reference has already been made - and, inflexible land tenure systems, both of which reinforced discrimination against migrant communities; and, the lopsided recruitment of Nigerians into the army and police. The single most divisive policy of the British, however, involved the establishment during the late colonial era in 1954 of a federal structure of three units, namely, the northern, western, and eastern regions. Although it reflected the historic patterns by which the British acquired and administered Nigeria as well as the country’s tripartite major ethnic configuration, the three-region federal structure was inherently divisive, disintegrative and unstable. The tripartite federal structure, in particular, promoted the invidious political hegemony of the Hausa-Fulani-dominated northern region, which officially contained over half of the country’s population and two-thirds of its territory; fostered ethnic majority chauvinism and secessionism by erecting the boundaries of the northern, western and eastern regions around the identities of the major ethnic formations of Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo, respectively; fuelled ethnic minority agitations because it denied the country’s non-Hausa-Fulani, non-Yoruba and non-Igbo groups the security of their own regions; and encouraged an enormous degree of ethno-regional polarization as the imbalanced tripartite ethno-regional structure (which became even more structurally lopsided with the creation of the Mid-west region in the south in 1963) inexorably collapsed into a bi-polar north-south confrontation.

Given the multiple cumulative ethnic contradictions and tensions built into the colonial experience in Nigeria, it is not surprising that this period actually witnessed the initial major instances of inter-ethnic violence in the country. In 1945, for instance, amidst a general strike and food shortages that the British colonial authorities blamed on Igbo nationalist politicians, violence erupted in the mining town of Jos between Igbo and Hausa migrants over residential and trading opportunities in the city (see Nnoli 1978: 235). The violence, which lasted for two days, left two persons dead, many others injured, and considerable amounts of property damaged (Nnoli 1978: 235). In 1953, the Hausa and Igbo again clashed in the northern city of Kano over the attempts by southern parties to hold rallies in the city in support of their anti-colonial campaign for Nigerian independence. The riot officially left at least 36 people dead (21 of them of Igbo ethnicity) and more than 200 people injured. The violence reflected the bitter opposition to the independence campaign by northern politicians, who feared that an end to British rule would mean domination of the north by the more developed south (for a good account of the xenophobic tone by which the northern elite mobilized the masses, see Feinstein, 1987: 159). The riot also reflected the resentment of Ibo domination of socioeconomic opportunities in Kano by the city’s indigenous Muslim Hausa population. Most important, the 1953 Kano riot presaged subsequent large-scale ethnic violence in Nigeria, including the 1966 anti-Igbo massacre in Kano and other northern cities that would accelerate the country’s descent into catastrophic civil war (Suberu and Diamond 2003: 120). In essence, colonialism effectively set the stage for the explosion of violent identity conflicts in post-independence Nigeria and for the huge challenge of national restructuring that would be required to hold the country’s multiple identity constituencies together in a single political community.

NIGERIA: POST-COLONIAL CONFLICTS (1960 - )

The postcolonial era in Nigeria has witnessed two contradictory tendencies. The first trend is the continuation and even aggravation as well as proliferation of colonial conflict legacies, leading to at least two waves of violent identity conflicts in Nigeria during 1960-70 and since the early eighties, respectively. The second tendency in postcolonial Nigeria involves a more or less concerted attempt to manage identity conflicts through innovative federalist practices. The colonial state, to reiterate, pursued divide-and-rule policies that entrenched systems of ethnic segmentation and polarization. These included the ‘Warrior tribe’ policy of recruitment into the army and the police, the exclusion of Christians and southerners from the core north and their restriction to strangers’ quarters, and the privileges accorded leaders of the major groups in the regions, all of which bequeathed a fatal legacy – part of which Kirk-Greene (1980) has referred to as damnosa hereditas (burdensome inheritance) – for post-independence Nigeria.

The lopsided colonial ethno-regional federal structure in particular, was heavily implicated in the first wave of violent ethno-political discontent and conflict in the postcolonial era, as evidenced in the Tiv riots of 1962 and 1964, and the secessionist campaign of Isaac Boro and his Ijaw collaborators in 1966, all of which underscored the continuing disenchantment of the ethnic minorities with their inequitable incorporation into the majority-dominated regions. The polarizing effects of ethno-regional federalism were more or less directly expressed in several other political tribulations that assailed Nigeria in the sixties, including: the 1962 declaration of a state of emergency in the Western region; the bitter ethno-regional dispute over the 1962-63 census; the 1964 federal election crisis; the 1965 western election debacle; the eventual overthrow of the First Nigerian Democratic Republic in 1966 following a bloody ethno-military coup; the complete fragmentation and politicization of the military establishment along ethno-regional lines; the attempted secession of the Eastern region, as the independent Republic of Biafra; and, the eventual outbreak of the 30-month civil war, which claimed an estimated one million lives, mainly in the ill-fated Biafra.

Although the diverse conflicts identified above have involved various degrees of violence or bloodletting, they have stopped short of actually precipitating the implosion or disintegration of the Nigerian entity. Since overcoming the 1967-70 civil war, Nigeria has been able to avoid the kind of large-scale internal disorder that has convulsed some African countries, yet significantly flawed, federal system.

PART THREE

UNITY IN DIVERSITY: Historical Perspective of the United States Federalism

This section examines the historical problems that befell the American Confederation after the Declaration of Independence and how the confederated states became a federation of the present United States of America and the most successful federalism for over 200 years. It would be a good example for the struggling Nigerian federalism.

The idea of sovereignty, that in all civil states it is necessary, there should somewhere be lodged a supreme power over the whole, was at the heart of the Anglo-American argument that led to the Revolution. The doctrine of sovereignty almost by itself compelled the imperial debate to be conducted in the most theoretical terms of political science. It was the single most important abstraction of politics in the entire Revolutionary era. The theory of sovereignty pervaded the arguments of the whole Revolutionary generation from the moment in the 1760’s when it was first raised through the adoption of the federal Constitution in 1787.

The problem of sovereignty was not solved by the Declaration of independence. With independence it became obvious that the Continental Congress, created simply out of the exigency of events in 1774, needed some more solid basis; the congressional delegates immediately began working on an agreement that would more permanently connect the new states in a central union. There were nationalistic sentiments in 1776, brought to the fore by the events of the previous decade – perhaps more of a feeling of oneness among thirteen disparate states than at any time in history. Indeed it was basic to their thought in 1776 – that only a small homogeneous society whose interests were essentially similar could properly sustain a republican government. But the climate and the economic and social interests of the separate states, … seemed so varied, the habits and character of the people, particularly between North and South, appeared so different , that a continental republic with a single government coalescing all the states was as nearly impossible of establishment …

A man’s “country” was still his state. As late as 1787, Marylanders still called their state “the nation.” The declaration of Independence, drawn up by the Continental Congress, was actually a declaration by “thirteen united States of America” proclaiming that as “Free and Independent States they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do. And the Articles of Confederation, for all the powers it theoretically gave to the Congress, did not in fact alter this independence. Commercial regulation and taxing power, indeed all final governmental, lawmaking power remained with the states. Congressional resolutions continued to be mere recommendations which the states were left to enforce. The states not only jealously guarded their independence and sovereignty by repeated assertions and declarations, but in fact assumed the powers of a sovereign state that Independence had given them, even in violation of the Articles of Confederation, making war, providing for armies, laying embargoes, even in some cases carrying on separate diplomatic correspondence and negotiations abroad. The Confederation was intended to be, and remained, a Confederation of sovereign states.

Beginning in the early 1780’s there were some Americans, increasingly concerned with the weakness of the confederacy, who sought by every possible means to strengthen the Congress, by direct amendment, by broad interpretation of the Articles, or even by military force and dictatorship . Despite all of their fulminations against “the present futile and senseless confederation” and their frantic denials of the “the Complete Sovereignty of each State,” the advocates of a stronger central government could not escape from the basic confederate nature of the union and the principle of sovereignty. “There was in nature no middle way between a federal and a corporate union,” opponents of centralization repeatedly retorted. “Each party to the confederation must possess sovereignty, for without that they are no longer States, and while they possess sovereignty, that sovereignty must be independent: For dependent sovereignty is nonsense.”

The clumsy efforts of the nationalist-minded to devise schemes for enforcing the measures of Congress, by distraining the property and interdicting the trade of the delinquent states – in effect levying war on the states – emphasized their frustration in dealing with such independent, sovereign states, “each with a government completely organized within itself, having all the means to draw its subjects to a close dependence on itself.” Despite the growing sentiment … that the Articles were “not adequate to the great purpose they were originally designed to effect,” every effort to change them was defeated. With peace Americans were now more eager than ever before “to oppose all encroachments of the American Congress upon the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the separate states.”

The whole country was “groaning under the intolerable burden of … accumulated evils.” It was a critical period. Americans suddenly seemed to have lost their nerve. “A foreigner could hardly believe we were that brave people who so nobly struggled for our Independence.” The British and the Tories had warned in the 1770’s that the moment a separation from Britain had taken effect “intestine quarrels will begin,” and Americans would “split into parties.” Now it seemed that such dire prophecies were being fulfilled. Now it seemed that such dire prophecies were being fulfilled. The Revolution, it became more and more obvious, was turning upon itself in ways that had not been foreseen, and men were emphasizing with renewed intensity that “unless a proper education of the rising generation is adopted, a new way of thinking and new principles can be introduced among the People of America, there are little hopes of the present republican Governments or anything like republican Governments being of any duration.”

It was ironic but undeniable: by the 1780’s the Revolutionary ideals seemed to be breeding the sources of their own miscarriage. All the evils which the Revolution was designed to eliminate were instead being aggravated. It had become all too evident to many that “in times of public confusion, and in the demolition of ancient institutions, blustering, haughty, licentious, self-seeking men” were gaining “the ear of the people,” exploiting republican ideology and disrupting the social fabric. Equality was not creating harmony and contentment after all. Indeed, it was noted, equality had become the very cause of the evils it was designed to eliminate. Among the Americans, “the idea of inferiority, as of pursuing a mean employment or occupation … mortifies the feelings, and sours the minds of those who feel themselves inferior.” Although the Revolution had placed government almost wholly in the hands of the people, the people were still suspicious and jealous, “the offspring of envy and disappointed ambition.” Despite the success of the war against Britain the people remained possessed by a “general uneasiness, … without the least apparent cause.” Instead of a community of placid yeomen, … the society appeared filled with inveterate grumbers. “Every man wants to be a judge, a justice, a sheriff, a deputy, or something else which will bring him a little money, or what is better, a little authority.”

Equal distribution of public goods (emphasis mine) so necessary for a republic was difficult enough to maintain when wealth was “in the hands of jarring individuals” Precisely, because of the existence of these kinds of privileges republicanism had not brought the commonwealth consensus that had been anticipated. In fact party strife in all of the states seemed as bitter as before the war. The Tories were gone. “the success of the war, and the establishment of legal government, has necessarily coalesced all party distinctions” The parties that were emerging were not those of the people against the rulers, the country against the court; they were instead parties among the people themselves, each aiming “at its own aggrandizement.” “Formerly, political distinction originated in the prevailing sentiment of patriotism – in the present times, they seem only relative to particular principles of interest,” to occupations, credit, debt, or religion. Such divisions among the people, it was argued, were obvious indications of selfishness and infirmity in the society. … Unless they were “cramped in embrio,” they would grow and eventually tear the state apart. Factionalism in a republic “should be particularly guarded against, its existence as a free government depending on a general unanimity.”

Americans thus experienced in the 1780’s not merely a crisis of authority – licentiousness leading to anarchy – which was a comprehensible abuse of a republican liberty, but also serious shattering of older ways of examining politics and a fundamental questioning of majority rule that threatened to shake the foundations of their republican experiments. It was extremely difficult, however, for most Americans to grasp what was happening and fit it into their accepted paradigm of politics. Most commentators were concerned with what they described as the breakdown in government and defy the laws by their claims that “a subordination to the laws, is always the cant word to enslave the people.”

The crisis was therefore of the most profound sort, involving no limited political or economic problems but the success of the republican experiment itself. Indeed no more appropriate term than “crisis” could have been used to describe what was happening. … Americans saw their country stricken by a serious sickness. The 1780’s seemed to mark the point in the life of the young nation where decisive change had to occur, leading either to recovery or death. It was a “crisis of moral and national reputation.” “The reputation of America is at stake… The self-sacrifice and patriotism of 1774-75 soon seemed to give way to greed and profiteering at the expense of the public good. At one time public spirit had been “the governing principle and distinguishing characteristic of brave Americans. But where is it now? Directly the reverse. Everywhere “Private Interest seemed to predominate over every Consideration that regarded the public weal.”

Americans soon began telling themselves that their early constitutions were “hasty productions on the spur of exigency,” ill adapted to the nature of the society. “Our government should in some degree be suited to our manners and circumstances,” John Jay said to Washington early in 1787, “and they, you know, are not strictly democratical.” By 1787 it had become a common opinion among many that “the source of all evils of which we complain, and of all those which we apprehend” lay in their “political systems.” Indeed, to some the American states possessed “some of the weakest and most inefficient governments … that ever nations were afflicted with.” There could be no doubt, as Washington put it, that “we have errors to correct.” If the American character was not capable of sustaining the popular nature of the Revolutionary constitutions, then the structure of those governments must be changed.

Nearly everyone in 1787 conceded “the weakness of the Confederation.” All “men of reflection,” even “the most orthodox republicans,” said Madison, were alarmed by “the existing embarrassments and mortal diseases of the Confederacy,” “It is on all hands acknowledged,” … “that the federal government is not adequate to the purpose of the Union.” It had become, “the universal wish of America to grant further powers” to Congress, “so as to make the federal government adequate to the ends of its institution.” Given America’s experience with central power, it is easy to see how the erection of a national government represented a political revolution as great as the revolution of a decade earlier, when the British monarchy had been overthrown and new state governments formed. Those earlier ventures, … “were nothing compared to the great business now before us,” mainly because Americans were now without the former enthusiasm for liberty “which inspired and supported the mind.”

The new federal government should be “clearly paramount” to the state governments. Not only should the national government have “a positive and complete authority in all cases where uniform measures are necessary,” as in finance, commerce, and foregn policy, but it should have “a negative, in all cases whatsoever, in the Legislative acts of the States …” This negative on all state legislation … seemed “absolutely necessary,” and “the least possible encroachment on the State jurisdictions” that should be established. Without the fedral veto, the whole purpose of the constitutional revision of 1787 would be defeated. The states would continue to ignore or evade federal authority and the society would continue to be plagued by “the internal vicissitudes of State policy” where “interested majorities” tramped “on the rights of minorities and individuals.” What was needed … was “some disinterested and dispassionate umpire” that would control “disputes between different passions and interests in the State,” but at the same time “without itself be sufficiently restrained from the pursuit of interests adverse to those of the whole Society.”

If the proposed central government … were to play the impartial role of neutralizer of interested majorities within the states, something more than simple amendment of the Articles was required. No longer would the granting of “any further degree of power to Congress do the business.’ The people of America, … had to become “one nation in every respect,” and their separate state legislatures had to stand in relation to the Confederacy “in the same light in which counties stand to the State, of which they are parts …” Thus the new general government could not remain a confederation of independent republics but had to be in its own right “a stable and firm Government organized in the republican from,”... “capable of controlling the whole, and bringing its force to a point,” in order to enable, … “justice, order and dignity” to take the place “of the present anarchical confusion prevailing almost everywhere.”

To the Federalists the move for the new central government became the ultimate act of the entire Revolutionary era; it was both a progressive attempt to salvage the Revolution in the face of its imminent failure and a reactionary effort to restrain its excesses. Only a new continental republic that cut through the structure of the states to the people themselves and yet was not dependent on the character of that people could save America’s experiment in republicanism. The federalists hoped to create an entirely new and original sort of republican government – a republic which did not require a virtuos people for its sustenance. The supporters of the new federal Constitution thus aimed to succeed where the states, not the Confederation, had failed, in protecting, … “the worthy against the licentious.

How the Federalists expected a new central government to remedy the vices the individual states had been unable to remedy is the central question, the answer to which lies at the heart of their understanding of what was happening in the critical period – the fundamental problem of social disarrangement (the atmosphere of mistrust, the breakdown of authority, the increase of debt, the depravity of manners, and the decline of virtue). More than anything else, the Federalists’ obsession with disorder in American society and politics accounts for the revolutionary nature of the nationalist proposals and for the resultant Federalist Constitution. The Federalists groped to explain the new system and to make sense of the “concurrent jurisdiction” of two legislatures over the same people. They stressed that the new government in many of its provisions was so ‘dependent on the constitution of the state legislatures for its existence” that it could never “swallow up its parts.” Each state was only ‘giving up a portion of its sovereignty” in order to “better secure the remainder of it.” … a dual allegiance, “two governments to which we shall owe obedience,” … “The two governments act in different manners, and for different purposes,” … “the general government in great national concerns, in which we interested in common with other members of the Union; the state legislature in our mere local concerns. … They can no more clash than two parallel lines can meet.” The state legislatures could therefore never lose never lose their sovereignty under the new Constitution.

Considering the general government with its supreme law and necessary and proper clauses, there were concerns for a declaration of rights to “serve as a barrier between the general government and the respective states and their citizens.” … “Where is the security? On this note a congressional adoption of the first ten amendments to the Constitution, a bill of rights put “a legal check … into the hands of the judiciary” which it could take hold of in protecting the people’s liberties.

PART FOUR

THE QUESTION PRESENTED

The question presented by this thesis is, whether the multi-ethnic groups in Nigeria are capable of co-existence as a federal state.



In view of its historical past and the ongoing crisis in the country, a sustainable peaceful co-existence among the multi-ethnic groups in Nigeria can only be achieved through the dynamics of true federalism. Unfortunately, following the unitary dictatorship of the colonial regime, the 30 years military dictatorship and the post-independence confederate units, Nigeria neither had a National leader nor experienced a true federal regime which befits its political status. Whenever a regime in Nigeria thought about federation, it is to create more states and local governments. However, a federation is defined by more than internal geopolitical boundaries. Those boundaries separate independent governments, a status that distinguishes the federation from a decentralized but unitary government. Furthermore, contrast to the confederation or treaty organization, each level of government, whether state or federal, enjoys a direct relationship with its citizens. The federation is a unique relationship between governments and the people.

How can a federal constitution – mere words on paper – produce a government that is strong, flexible, and resilient? A federal constitution creates distinct governments endowed with different responsibilities. The boundaries between national and state government authority are set with goals in mind; to be effective, these boundaries must be maintained and.

A government is deemed federal if it meets the following three structural criteria:

1. Geopolitical Division: The territory is divided into mutually exclusive states. The existence of each state is constitutionally recognized and may not be unilaterally abolished. A trend of violent communal conflicts spreading through Nigeria in recent years has intensified, leaving hundreds of people dead and thousands displaced. From Warri in the south to Kafanchan in the north and from Aguleri-Umuleri in the east to Ife-Modakeke in the west, neighbouring communities have pounced on each other with destructive fury hardly justified by longstanding geopolitical rivalries.

2. Independence: The state and national governments have independent bases of authority. In general, this independence is established constitutionally through electoral independence, where each government is held accountable to its constituents, although nondemocratic forms of independence may be available. Independence, reflects James Madison’ thesis: government self-control may be induced by creating composition between governments. Independence creates distinct political wills. Since and after the so called independence, Nigeria has witnessed the commandeering power of the national government over the states. This issue is discussed in detail in my second paper titled: “STATE SOVEREIGNTY AN INIMITABLE QUALITY OF FEDERALISM: A critical analysis of Nigerian approach to the concept of state sovereignty.”

3. Direct Governance: Authority is shared between the state and the national government: each governs its citizens directly, so that each citizen is governed by at least two authorities. Each level of government is sovereign in at least one policy realm. This sovereignty is constitutionally declared. Both federal and state law implies obligations and rights for private citizens. When the laws and both levels of government apply directly to its citizens, then the ciotizens have rights under those laws and may pursue those rights in court. Nigeria cannot be said to be a federation when the national government can neither protect the rights of the citizens nor uphold the distribution of authority. Rather, the national government masterminds the abuse of citizen’s rights and manipulates the distribution in its favor because it can dominate the state governments.

Nigeria could not be said to be a true federal state when there no mechanism for each level of government to check on the activities of the other. For example in the United States, the Tenth Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Tenth Amendment protects state sovereignty from federal encroachment. Thus, the Tenth Amendment serves a mechanism of checks and balances between the states and federal governments, and federal laws encroaching upon the jurisdiction of the state would be unconstitutional.

PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS TO NIGERIAN HETEROGENEOUS PROBLEMS

In order to celebrate the nation unity in diversity, I have offered the following pragmatic applications:

1. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF NIGERIA’S HISTORICAL PAST

While we do not want to dwell in our past, it is important for us to seriously understand where we started. There are very many politicians in our country who do not know the true historical facts of the country, Nigeria. It would be difficult to achieve a peaceful co-existence if we do not understand the predicament of our historical past. We must realize that, Nigeria is a formation of colonial administrative strategy. We came out of the European greed for power and wealth; hence we are a victim of human greediness. When America was faced with the same plague of human tyranny, they responded in these words:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government. … when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”(American declaration of independence July 4, 1776).

When we turn to the pages of Nigerian national archives, nothing is found other than the urge for independence to further regional, ethnic and religious interests. The Northern leaders were seeking to protect northern interests and the same were the leaders of the Western and Eastern regions. Unlike the United States, the first Nigerian regional leaders did not consider their common history as the basis for a federal constitution.

2. IDENTIFICATION AND RECOGNITION OF ETHNIC SOVEREIGNTIES

It is important to note that, before the advent of colonial masters, each ethnic group in Nigeria was as independent, and as much the master of its own domestic affairs, as it was before the amalgamation in 1914. They were simply, so far as each other was concerned, distinct independent sovereignties doing business in their own way. In fact, they were distinctive nations who speak the same language, have the same religion, and were bound by a shared past, and so on. The amalgamation was not necessarily union in its highest moral sense; it was necessity - it was forced upon independent separate communities, for colonial administrative purposes. Truly, the political roots and identity of these nations although weakened, were not destroyed. They were only waiting for the year of liberty from their colonial masters. They became revived following the declaration of independence and began to fight for their individual sovereign past to this day. In order to attain peaceful co-existence, the sovereignties of these nations must be recognized.

3. FORMATION OF UNION

Following the evil of colonial regime, these nations came together to fight their common enemy, the Great Britain. The coming together did not necessarily imply love for each other, or family feeling; it might have been brought about - it was brought about - by a thousand divergent self-interests, which, through so many different channels, culminated in a political combination for the specific purposes of external defense against a shared enemy. But this does not necessarily imply the essential properties of union, any more than a heap of sand implies, union. A heap of sand is composed of innumerable particles of separate atoms, pressed closely together, but there is no union between them. Thus there may be combinations of states without union. Bodies of men held together by restraint would not be a union, any more than states held together by coercive force would be a union. It is despotism. A union implies the freedom of choice - the act of voluntary association and of moral affinity. In fact, the coming together of the Northern, Eastern and Western regions to fight for independence, did not in any way contain the elements or substance of a union, it was only a cumbrous and expensive organized disunion.

For purposes of co-existence, Nigeria must form a Nigerian Union. It must be a temple of liberty, reared upon mutual wants, sympathies, and concessions of peace loving people. It must be a bond of amity, friendship, and mutual protection. It was never intended to be used. as a piece of machinery for fostering bickerings, jealousies, distrust and hate between the different members of the great family of States. The moment it ceased to be a bond of amity, respect and mutual concessions, it ceased to be a Union. The moment that the North and South began to organize political combinations against each other, the hand of an invisible fiend began to toll the death knell of the Union.

The second paragraph of that immortal declaration proclaims that government derives its “just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.” It was in defense of this principle that the American fathers in periled their fortunes, their sacred honor, and their lives. The war of independence was fought on this basis. Independence was achieved on this basis. This is the American principle. The Americans know that to deny it or to forsake it, would be to turn their faces away from the American continent, and go back to the darkest period of the Norman despotism. To deny it, would be to brand their fathers with the infamous name of “rebel,” or to proclaim in the face of the world that they are “bastards, and not sons.” To deny it, would be to say that they died like fools in their own blood, and left them inheritors of nothing but a fraud and a lie.”

4. FEDERAL CONSTITUTION

The Constitution of the United States was the result of a "Great Compromise" in which leaders of the early days of the American Republic negotiated the relative powers that would be given to the three branches of the federal government and the division of powers between the national and the state governments. The genius contained within the Constitution is reflected in the fact that it creates a people, explains its reason for being, articulates goals, and fashions a government.

A federal Constitution involves negotiations and compromises among citizens because they need to work out areas of common agreement and then negotiate compromises on contentious issues. There must be enough time to revisit some constitutional assumptions and principles in Nigeria in formulating a true federal constitution. Ordinary people and their representatives must be involved. The states of the federation and the representatives of the people must have a significant role in constructing the debates on their future or in ratifying the outcome of the constitution’s deliberations.

Following military rule in Nigeria, the old constitutional consensus that Nigeria is a federation and a republic has disappeared. It must therefore be demonstrated that, "federal" and "republic" are constitutional terms that should have consequences for the way the constitution is constructed. The federating units (states in Nigeria) should be equal partners in the making of any constitution. A republic is a nation whose citizens have an active role in choosing the way they are governed. Effective democracy depends on citizen participation. As more people become enfranchised or enter the political arena, a wider variety of perspectives contribute to public deliberation. As diversity increases, all else equal, collective decision making improves.

5. NATIONAL IDENTITY

Since and after independence, Nigeria has not had a national leader. The “country” has always been a collection of religious and regional leaders. The political leader is either a man from the Moslem North or Christian South (East or west). Nigerians have never experienced a Nigerian leadership. When Nigeria achieved independence from Great Britain in October 1960, it was a nation in name only. It existed as a political and legal entity, not as an effective and emotive identity. It was not a nation in the sense of community and common character. It was a state encompassing many ethnic nations, each claiming their own separate heritage, language, and culture. At independence, Nigeria's peoples for the most part had not yet come to think of themselves as Nigerians. Ethnic loyalty took precedence over national identity. The nation's people identified themselves primarily as Hausa-Fulani, Ibo, or Yoruba, for example. Their identity as Nigerians lay in the shadow of their tribal and parochial allegiances. Independent Nigeria emerged as a new political entity without a common history or common tradition. It had to build itself as a nation, while at the same time developing its powers as a state. The background of its federal form dimmed the prospects of both tasks.

6. TRUE FEDERALISM

In view of the country’s rich multi-ethnicities, languages, religions and cultures, true federalism is a recommended instrument for a peaceful co-existence and mutual flourishing. Federations have often been formed by the coming together of a number of established political communities which nevertheless wish to preserve their separate identities and, to some extent, their autonomy. As I discussed above, the historical sovereignty of each member state, must be recognized and respected. As a political form, federalism requires the existence of two distinct levels of government, neither of which is legally subordinate to the other. This ensures, at least in theory that neither level of government can encroach on the powers of the other. A successful federal system is based on a compromise between unity and regional diversity, between the need for an effective central power and the need for checks or constraints on that power.

7. CONSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS

It must be recognized that federalism presupposes limits to the federal government’s power and authority. Without constitutional boundaries, the national government would usurp the power of the states. In that event, the states would become mere instruments or administrative subunits of a central, unitary government. The constitutional reflection of this recognition is the doctrine of enumerated powers. Enumerated powers means that the federal government possesses only and all the powers given to it by the Constitution, and lacks general, plenary authority either over the states or over private citizens. For purposes of peaceable co-existence, the sovereignty of each state must be respected, and the only way to do this is through federalism.

8. INDEPENDENT JUDICIARY

The protection of the enumerated powers, in turn, presupposes some form of independent judicial review. Since a federal system will present conflicts among the member states and between the states and the national government. Madison explained, “Some … tribunal is clearly essential to prevent an appeal to the sword and a dissolution of the compact,” and the “decision is to be impartially made, according to their rules of the Constitution.” In order words, the task of safeguarding federalism’s structure must be entrusted, neither to the states nor the federal government, but rather to the courts, in the course of judicial review. Federalism’s purpose is to enhance and protect the citizen’s liberty and welfare. To that end, the federal government must be disabled from encroaching into the states jurisdiction (emphasis mine), and nobody but the courts can provide such restraint. Enumerated powers and the judicial enforcement of the limits they imply are the federalism’s touchstone.

9. ACCOUNTABILITY.

Representation and accountability go hand-in-hand: elected leaders are more likely to represent their constituents faithfully when they know they are held accountable for their actions. Accountability is impossible without transparent responsibility. Therefore, it is claimed that authority decentralization improves accountability because citizens are more likely to see the effects of government action at the local level and respond accordingly in the ballot box.

Nigerian citizens face a key challenge in holding their political representatives accountable, since decentralization reforms tend to be partial in nature, leading to the involvement of multiple tiers of government in the provision of public goods. Under complete decentralization, voters can limit governments rent seeking by setting appropriate reelection incentives. The ability of voters to hold politicians accountable is lower under partial decentralization than under complete decentralization.

Decentralization of expenditure responsibilities from central to local governments is generally thought to increase overall government accountability by bringing the policymaking process closer to citizens. Decentralization of expenditure responsibilities from central to local levels of government is generally thought to mitigate the problem by bringing the policymaking process closer to citizens and, hence, to increase overall government accountability.

The World Bank (2004), for example, has strongly advocated decentralization on the basis that it will help to solve corruption problems, especially in developing countries. The standard intuition that decentralization should be accountability-improving is consistent with theoretical models considering complete decentralization, i.e. the full transfer of a given expenditure responsibility from a higher level of government to a lower one.

10. SEPARATION OF STATE AND RELIGION

When the government puts its imprimatur on a particular religion it conveys a message of exclusion to all those who do not adhere to the favored beliefs. A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some."

The principle actually involves separation of religion from the government.

It includes:

• Churches, circles, groves, gurdwaras, mosques, synagogues, temples, etc., and the organizations of which they are a part.

• Solitary practitioners of an organized religion.

• People who consider themselves religious, but are not affiliated with any specific group.

• Humanists, secularists, Agnostics, Atheists, etc. all of whom have specific religious beliefs. Although some would consider them non-religious, if you ask an Agnostic what their religion is, they will probably reply "Agnostic."

The US Supreme Court has interpreted the principle as if it requires a "wall of separation " between religion and state. It not only prohibits any government from adopting a particular denomination or religion as official, but requires government to avoid excessive involvement in religion.

The framers of the U.S. Constitution were concerned that European history might repeat itself in the new world. They wanted to avoid the continual wars motivated by religious hatred that had decimated many countries within Europe. They decided that a church/state separation was their best assurance that the U.S. would remain relatively free of inter-religious strife. Many commentators feel that over two centuries of relative religious peace in the U.S. have shown that they were right.

Despite its constitutional secularity in Section 10, the use of religion as a tool for achieving political goals has contributed immensely to the problem of religious crisis in Nigeria. Some politicians in Nigeria claim to be altruistic and engage in reactionary recourse to religious fervor as a means of either holding on to power, or as an instrument for political ascendancy. In such sphere, their fellow religious adherents are often mobilized and exploited to achieve selfish political goals.

The sanction and enforcement of Sharia laws in and by some State Governments rise against the fundamental constitutional principle as a secular state. Our political leaders, on both sides -- Muslims and Christians -- have invoked the name of God in politics, and sought to use religion freely in influencing the polity, decisions and swaying national political and eco¬nomic policies and to that end governance. We are, evidently, no longer able to maintain the fundamental principles of a secular state. It is hard to explain that despite the constitutional proclamation of separation of State and Religion, there are both mosque and church in the State House, where a Moslem or Christian president hold religious services.

Nigeria cannot think of peaceful co-existence when the principle of separation of State and religion is only a paper document without any practical observance of it.

CONCLUSION

Since the Nigerian independence from Britain in 1960, there have been both local and international conferences on how to solve Nigerian complex federal problems. Probably by ignorance or out of self-pride, the Nigerian policy makers had not experimented on the examples of one of the most successful experiments in the world federalism – the United States of America. With sobriety, Nigerians must admit that, the nation is faced with federalism problems, and that it is time to turn to another successful federal charter for some lessons. This is not to undermine Nigeria's integrity as a nation, but rather in consideration of the nature of the debilitating problems that we face.

I strongly recommend that the people of Nigeria rise up to a search for a national rather than a regional leader, which has been the case since 1960. Not just a national leader, but also an enlightened individual rather than a short-sighted regional opportunist.

My study of the United States federalism and other federal characters in the world shows that Nigeria has never been a federation. A true federalism, which is the only suitable system for Nigerian heterogeneous society could only begin by the ability to form a union of states through a “Constitutional Conference of Compromise” (CCC). This is the starting point. Except we recognize the pre-colonial independent states in a (CCC), Nigeria shall remain too far from a true federation. It is difficult to destroy an entity which does not emanate from one creation or purchase. These states are rising up to demand recognition [It is their fight for recognition that is often mistaken for ethnic conflicts] – they were independent entities before colonialism and could neither be destroyed then nor thereafter. There must be a union of compromise. With a union of compromise, an individual would be able to identify him or her – self first as a Nigerian before his or her ethnic identity. Presently, there are people of different ethnic and religious groups in conflicts within Nigeria who know nothing about unity or nationality, because the country has never had a national leader or identity since independence.

The (CCC) should be able to produce a federal constitution of compromise such that is applicable to the Union history, culture and social life in the light of a civilized world.

In order to strengthen the “Union”, and transformed the agreements of the (CCC) into a working reality, I strongly recommend a completely independent of the Judiciary with life-tenure for federal Judges. Like the United States and other civilized federal nations, every individual, private and public entity must be subject to neutral, generally applicable law in the country.

The CCC would also consider enumerating powers of the federal government and a clear statement of the rights of the states in the Constitution which would allow for the operation of checks and balances between the states and federal governments as well as a basis for judicial review. In the United States, the constitution clearly assumes the prior and continued existence of state governments. The Tenth Amendment declares that, “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Hence, the federal government is precluded from enacting legislation that undermines the political independence or integrity of states. For example, the federal government may not control the employment conditions of state employees, and may not enlist or “commandeer” state employees to implement federal programs. Tenth amendment serves as a defense of state sovereignty against national impositions . It is a guarantee of state immunity .

The Founders of American constitution recognized that federalism presupposes limits to the federal government’s power and authority … Without constitutional boundaries, the national government would readily give in to demands to wipe out state competition. In that event, the states would become mere instruments or administrative subunits of a central, unitary government. The constitutional reflection of this recognition is the doctrine of enumerated powers. Thus, the powers of the federal government are enumerated and limited.

In Nigeria, except for the rather vague statement in Section 2 of the 1999 Constitution, there are no definite enumerated powers of the federal government and the states’ rights in the Constitution. In the United States, the powers of the federal government are enumerated and limited. Such enumerated and limited powers allows for checks and judiciary review of both the state and federal encroachments. It is important to note that when each state agreed to become part of the federal republic of Nigeria, they did with the intention to surrender some of its powers without any recourse to their sovereign identity and direct governance of its citizens. The major cause of ethnic crisis in Nigeria is mostly because the sovereignty of these states has been trampled upon by the central government.

True federalism is the only solution for the Nigerian social, economic and political problems. Nigeria comprises of a number of established political communities which nevertheless wish to preserve their separate identities and, to some extent their autonomy. Each state possesses a distinctive political identity and set of traditions that it is determined to preserve within a more centralized, constitutional framework. There is importance of establishing a strong centralized government while at the same time preserving state and individual freedoms. In view of its heterogeneous character, Federalism would best serve Nigeria for the following reasons:

First, British colonial rule had held the country together as one unit. Hence, any form of secession, as some people suggest, after 86 years (Since 1914) as one unit, would destabilize national unity as well as security of the nation. Second, the regions had economic complementarities. In particular, for export purposes, the landlocked northern region depended greatly on the southern regions that had access to the sea. While the oil in southern states becomes the main income resources for the country, the southern states depend on the Northern states for cattle and other agricultural produce. Third, the country's large size of 923,768 sq km and population of 152,217, 341 provide for its regional power within the sub-Saharan Africa.