IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/publus/v35y2005i3p383-405.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Nigerian Federation at the Crossroads: The Way Forward

Author

Listed:
  • Ladipo Adamolekun

Abstract

This article reviews the first fifty years of federal experience in Nigeria. It distinguishes three phases: an apprenticeship to “true” federalism phase (1954-1965), a federal dominance phase under military rule (1966-1979 and 1984-1999), and a “muddling-through” phase under civilian rule (1979-1983 and 1999 to date). The first phase was characterized by political devolution and intergovernmental competition, during which regional governments recorded tangible results. During the second phase, successive military regimes imposed centralism and federal dominance that kept Nigeria united but arrested progress toward consolidating federal democracy. Civilian administrations under the third phase have sought to run the federation in a muddling-through fashion, including serious political and social tensions, modest economic performance, and deepening poverty. Currently, therefore, the Nigerian federation is at a crossroads and has two options: devolution or death. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Ladipo Adamolekun, 2005. "The Nigerian Federation at the Crossroads: The Way Forward," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 35(3), pages 383-405, Summer.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:publus:v:35:y:2005:i:3:p:383-405
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/publius/pji027
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kayode Taiwo & Linda G. Veiga, 2020. "Is there an “invisible hand” in the formula-based intergovernmental transfers in Nigeria?," NIPE Working Papers 02/2020, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    2. Rotimi T. Suberu, 2009. "Religion and institutions: Federalism and the management of conflicts over Sharia in Nigeria," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(4), pages 547-560.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:publus:v:35:y:2005:i:3:p:383-405. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/publius .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.