“The co-existence of several nations under the same State is a test, as well as the best security, of its freedom.” — Lord Acton

Nigeria’s convoluted debate on restructuring has endured for decades because it supposedly speaks to questions of power, identity, representation, resource distribution, security, federalism and belonging. Precisely because the debate has been driven largely by sectional advocates and habitual agitators, however, it has also become increasingly burdened and polarised by a tendency towards reductionism, or the habit of explaining the country’s many and complex difficulties through a single grievance, a single historical narrative, a single ethnic experience or a single constitutional remedy. It is here that the discourse on the so-called “national question” becomes difficult, protracted and, at times, almost futile. Nigeria undoubtedly has structural problems, just as other countries do. It also has governance challenges, adversarial politics, elite misconduct, civic indiscipline, institutional weakness, manufactured discontents and problems arising from deep historical memories. To collapse all these into one argument that Nigeria will work better only if one particular restructuring formula is adopted may be emotionally satisfying, but it is intellectually shallow and politically reactionary.

The central question, therefore, is no longer simply whether Nigeria should restructure. It is whether restructuring is being presented as a panacea, pursued as a genuine national project, or increasingly deployed as an instrument of demagoguery, a mockery of democracy and a vocabulary through which competing groups selfishly articulate accumulated grievances. That distinction is essential if an honest national discourse is to be undertaken. A federation is, by its nature, an arrangement for managing diversity. It seeks to reconcile unity with autonomy, common citizenship with regional identity, and national authority with sub-national self-government. Nigeria’s problem is not that diversity exists; that is an enduring fact. The more difficult question is whether the state has developed institutions capable of managing that diversity fairly, equitably, peacefully and productively.

Lord Acton’s dictum is instructive in this regard. The coexistence of several nations within one state is not necessarily evidence of political failure. It is, rather, a test of liberty and constitutional maturity. The challenge is whether institutions can make diversity compatible with freedom, equality and political order.

When those institutions are compromised and rendered incapable of delivering satisfactory governance, every disagreement acquires an ethnic or sectional interpretation. Administrative failures become evidence of domination. Economic inequalities are interpreted as deliberate marginalisation. Political defeat is transformed into collective humiliation. Historical assumptions become territorial claims. Every federal appointment, budgetary allocation, state boundary or constitutional provision is then subjected to ethnic or regional arithmetic. It is at this point that restructuring ceases to be merely a constitutional discussion and becomes part of the broader politics of grievance. There is nothing illegitimate about nursing a grievance or articulating it where it genuinely exists. Nations must allow legitimate grievances to be expressed freely and intelligently. Indeed, suppressing them may constitute a greater threat to national stability than openly debating them. But grievance must ultimately be converted into a constitutional proposition, not transformed into fuel for agitation and disunity. It must answer practical questions. What precisely is wrong with the country? What institution should be rearranged or changed? By what process? To whose benefit? At whose cost? And how will the rights of others be safeguarded?

Without this discipline, restructuring becomes an endlessly expanding concept into which every disappointment may be inserted. For some Nigerians, restructuring means a return to the regional arrangement of the First Republic. For others, it means fiscal federalism and greater resource control. Some understand it as devolution of powers from the Federal Government to the states. Others advocate state police, constitutional recognition of traditional institutions or the creation of additional states. Still others propose the consolidation of the present 36 states into larger regions. At the furthest end of the argument are those for whom restructuring is essentially a transitional language for confederation, self-determination or eventual separation. All these positions are described by the same word; however, they do not necessarily lead to the same destination. That is why the restructuring debate must first be rescued from ambiguity, inconsistency, shallowness and opportunism. Recent arguments surrounding the idea of autonomous regions illustrate the difficulty. One school of thought sees historical regions as natural foundations upon which a new federation may be reconstructed. Another insists that communities cannot simply be reassigned to reconstructed regions on the basis of historical maps, ethnic narratives or claims advanced on their behalf. Contemporary consent, according to this argument, must be central.

This raises one of the most profound questions in any future restructuring of Nigeria: who actually owns territory? Is territory inherited by historical regions? Does it belong to so-called ethnic nations? Is it defined by existing state boundaries? Or does ownership and political legitimacy ultimately rest with the communities presently inhabiting the territory? If so, when did such communities come into possession, and through what means — migration, conquest, displacement, allocation or settlement?

History unquestionably matters. No serious constitutional settlement can disregard it. Present identities, boundaries, conflicts and solidarities are themselves products of history. But history cannot be invoked selectively. Every part of Nigeria possesses multiple historical layers, shaped by the expansion and contraction of kingdoms, the movement of peoples, the emergence of emirates and chiefdoms, colonial boundaries, the rearrangement of older political communities, and the creation, merger and division of provinces.

So too did the establishment of regions, later abolished and succeeded by states in exercises beginning in 1967 and continuing through 1996, alter these historical arrangements. There is therefore no single pristine map to which Nigeria can simply be returned. This is precisely where reductionism becomes dangerous. Once history is reduced to one preferred narrative or period — whether 1914, 1960, 1963 or some earlier moment — that chosen point becomes a political entitlement. One group may point to the map of 1963, while another invokes the nineteenth century, pre-colonial kingdoms, colonial provinces or present administrative boundaries. A nation of more than two hundred million people, composed of hundreds of ethnic groups and subgroups, cannot build its constitutional future by allowing competing historical narratives and imaginary maps to become instruments of possession. Any restructuring that alters territorial relationships must therefore contain a strong element of consent. Communities should not simply be transferred from one political arrangement to another as though they were administrative property. But consent itself requires careful definition and a rational legal basis. 

If every village, ward, town, district or local government were independently entitled to choose its preferred region, the federation could become permanently fluid and unstable.

Territorial politics might descend into an endless series of claims, referenda and counterclaims. Economic viability, geographical contiguity and administrative coherence would become increasingly difficult to sustain. The principle of consent must therefore operate within an agreed national constitutional framework. It cannot mean an unlimited right of territorial fragmentation elasticity.

This is the essential balance Nigeria must find: historical identity without historical domination; community choice without permanent atomisation; and regional autonomy without national disintegration. The danger of the current discourse, driven increasingly by ethnic nationalism, is that too many actors approach restructuring from the standpoint of what their own group has lost or stands to gain rather than from the standpoint of what constitutional order all Nigerians can live under.

The language is revealing. One hears of stolen territories, denied access, lost political influence, historical ownership, strangers, domination, marginalisation and restitution. These are the vocabularies of discontent, grievance and, occasionally, unreason. They may describe apparently genuine experiences, but they cannot, by themselves, constitute a national federal constitution.

A constitution is necessarily a compromise and an accommodation among competing claims. The Kanuri, Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Fulani, Tiv, Ijaw, Ibibio, Nupe, Gbagyi, Jukun, Edo, Igala, Birom, Angas, Egbira, Idoma, Urhobo, Marghi, Itsekiri and Nigeria’s numerous other communities all possess historical narratives. None can reasonably expect its own narrative to become the overriding and exclusive organising principle of the federation.

The purpose of restructuring should therefore not be to transform historical recollections into territorial entitlement or grievance into constitutional ownership. History should inform the debate, certainly, but it should not imprison it. Any sustainable arrangement must recognise contemporary populations, existing communities, economic viability, constitutional order and, above all, the legitimacy of consent.

The real test is whether Nigerians are discussing restructuring in order to build a more workable and durable federation, or whether they are merely seeking a new constitutional vocabulary through which old disputes can be pursued. That is where the distinction between genuine and rational restructuring, on the one hand, and irrational grievance and reductionism, on the other, begins.