Federalism in Nigeria : between divisions in conflict and stability in diversity

Abstract

Nigeria is a product of the amalgamation of Northern and Southern British protectorates, that is the primary cause of the Nigeria’s political instability, ethnoreligious divisions and underdevelopment. Adopting a pragmatic constitutional approach that institutionalizes federal constitution would produce a promising political mechanism for addressing ethnic, cultural and religious diversity. Meanwhile the adoption of relevant political structure should be guided by the ethical and political comparative advantages of many different political structures. The originality of this doctoral research is based on findings from data analyses that show positive dispositions of respondents to adoption of a federal constitution to achieve stability in diversity and the current operation of unitary constitution as inappropriate. The study underlines that adoption and implementation of a federal constitution, fiscal federalism and secularism is sine-qua-non.