On May 29, 1999, Olusegun Obasanjo raised his hand and swore an oath to a constitution he had not written, that no Nigerian had voted for, and that had been decreed into existence eleven days earlier by the military government of General Abdulsalami Abubakar. The constitution began with the words "We the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria" — but no referendum was held. The people were never asked. The words were a fiction, and everyone knew it, and the republic began anyway, because the alternative was more military rule, and the country had had enough of that.
This is the framework under which every Nigerian alive today has been governed. It is worth understanding what it is, because it is the architecture of everything that works and everything that does not.
The 1999 Constitution creates a presidential system modeled on the American one — three branches, separation of powers, checks and balances. The president serves four-year terms, maximum two. The legislature is bicameral: a Senate of 109 members and a House of Representatives of 360. The judiciary is independent in theory. The states have their own governors and legislatures. On paper, it looks like a federation.
On paper.
In practice, the federal government controls everything that matters. The Second Schedule of the Constitution lists sixty-eight items on the Exclusive Legislative List — matters on which only the National Assembly can legislate. These include: arms and ammunition, aviation, banking, currencies, customs, defence, diplomatic relations, drug policy, elections, energy, environmental regulation, immigration, labour, maritime shipping, mines and minerals, nuclear energy, oil and gas, passports, pensions, police, postal services, railways, telecommunications, trademarks, and water from sources affecting more than one state. Sixty-eight items. The states can legislate on whatever is left over — which, after the Exclusive and Concurrent lists have taken their share, is not much.
The result is a federation in name and a unitary state in function. The states — the tier of government closest to the people — depend on the federal government for their survival. Section 162 of the Constitution establishes the Federation Account, into which all federally collected revenue is paid, and from which it is distributed to the three tiers of government. The states receive roughly half. The local governments receive roughly twenty percent. And because the federal government controls oil revenue, customs duties, value-added tax, and corporate income tax — the vast majority of the country's earnings — the states are, in financial terms, administrative units of the center.
This is not federalism. It is the opposite. Federalism means that the constituent units are sovereign in their own spheres — that they raise their own revenue, make their own policy, and govern their own people in the areas that affect daily life. What Nigeria has is a system where the center collects the money, the center decides how much the states receive, and the states spend the month waiting for the allocation from Abuja. State governors spend more time lobbying the federal government for projects and appointments than governing their own states. The political economy of the Fourth Republic is an economy of patronage, and the patron sits in Abuja.
Then there is the oil. Approximately ninety percent of Nigeria's export earnings and sixty percent of government revenue come from petroleum. This means the government does not need to tax its citizens. And a government that does not need to tax its citizens does not need their consent. The social contract — the exchange of taxation for representation, of revenue for accountability, of the people's money for the people's government — never forms. The government answers to the oil companies and the international financial institutions, not to the people. The people are an externality. A problem to be managed. A population to be policed.
The Fourth Republic has now lasted twenty-five years. Five presidents. Six election cycles. And the structural problems have not changed:
Every election has been contested. The 2007 elections were described by international observers as deeply flawed. The 2019 elections saw the suspension of the electronic transmission of results. The 2023 elections were marred by suppression in opposition strongholds. The Electoral Act of 2022 introduced the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, which improved accreditation, but the integrity of the count remains contested in every cycle. A system where the incumbent controls the electoral commission, the security apparatus, and the judiciary that adjudicates disputes is a system where the opposition wins only when the incumbent allows it. Jonathan allowed it in 2015. That remains the exception.
Security has deteriorated across every region. Boko Haram in the North-East. Banditry and kidnapping in the North-West. Separatist agitation and military crackdowns in the South-East. Communal violence in the Middle Belt. Pipeline vandalism in the Niger Delta. The police — centralized, underfunded, under-equipped — cannot protect 220 million people. Many communities rely on vigilante groups, ethnic militias, or private security. The state's monopoly on violence, which is the prerequisite for the rule of law, has been eroded to the point where large portions of the country exist outside the protection of the state.
Two constitutional conferences have been held — in 2005 under Obasanjo and in 2014 under Jonathan. Both produced recommendations for restructuring, fiscal federalism, and devolution of power. Neither was implemented. The structure that the conferences were convened to reform proved immune to reform, because the people who benefit from the structure are the people who control the mechanism of reform.
So the question is not whether the Fourth Republic is working. By any measure of democratic accountability — fiscal transparency, electoral integrity, security of the person, freedom of the press, independence of the judiciary — it is not. The question is whether the structure itself is capable of producing something different from what it has produced for twenty-five years.
A constitution that was imposed by a military government, that centralizes fiscal and legislative power in the executive, that makes the states financially dependent on the center, that gives the federal government exclusive control of the economy's most important sector, that allows the government to suspend fundamental rights at its discretion — can this structure produce a government that serves its people?
Twenty-five years of evidence suggest the answer is no. The structure produces what it was designed to produce: a strong center, weak states, a dependent citizenry, and a political class that brokers between the nation and international capital. It produces, in other words, exactly what Fanon predicted the post-colonial state would produce — not because Nigerians are incapable of self-governance, but because the architecture of self-governance was never built.
Other countries have faced this question and answered it differently. South Africa drafted a new constitution after apartheid — one that was debated publicly, adopted by an elected constitutional assembly, and certified by an independent constitutional court. It is not perfect, but it was chosen. Brazil rewrote its constitution in 1988 after military rule — through a democratically elected constituent assembly that sat for two years and produced a document that expanded rights and decentralized power. Ghana has amended its constitution multiple times since 1992, strengthening its electoral commission and its judiciary.
The common thread is that the people who would live under the constitution had a voice in writing it. Nigeria has never done this. Not in 1960, not in 1979, not in 1999. Every constitution has been handed down — by the colonial office, by a constituent assembly controlled by the military, by a decree. The people have never been in the room.
The Fourth Republic will continue until it does not. But the question it raises will not wait for its collapse: what would a constitution look like if the people of Nigeria wrote it themselves? Not the political class. Not the military. Not the brokers of the transmission line. The people. The ones who stand in lines under the sun. The ones who mark their ballots and watch the announcements stop. The ones who pay the price of a structure they did not choose.
That constitution has never been written. But it is the only one that will hold.