ABSTRACT
The Nigerian federal system is the oldest on the African continent. It was established in 1954, a few years before the establishment of the short-lived "Mali federation" comprising Mali and Senegal, 1958-1960. It has been maintained, with various transmutations, longer than the few other federal systems that have emerged in the continent since 1960. "Military federalism," an expression that has been used in the literature on Nigerian federalism, is a misnomer; what existed in reality under successive military juntas was a "bastardized" federal system. The fifty-one-month civilian rule interlude of 1979-1983 did not make any serious attempt to reverse the features of the inherited bastardized federal system. The civilian administration was still in a veritable muddling-through mode when the brass hats grabbed power again in January 1984. In both eastern and western Nigeria, the regional governments rapidly established elected local governments that assumed responsibility for managing local affairs.
