ABSTRACT
Within the last three decades of the twentieth century, Nigeria produced no fewer than three constitutions, each of which, in various degrees, recognized and institutionalized ethnic differences. The most path-breaking was the ‘federal character’ constitution of 1979 that had several levers for engineering political inclusion and stability. The innovation was such that the constitution received praise around the world and was later used by Donald Horowitz to develop a theory of political accommodation for multi-ethnic societies. Despite the energies and skills that were invested in producing it, the legal document did not achieve its intended purpose and did not endure. Attempts in the 1980s and 1990s at identifying and correcting the weaknesses of the federal character constitution yielded nothing substantive. Consequently, the 1989 and 1999 constitutions did not travel beyond their predecessor in terms of providing new devices for political inclusion. As Nigeria begins the twenty-first century with democratic governance and a commitment to remaining one country, this is the time to ponder the levers that can be used to accommodate its multiple groups equally and to engineer harmony among them. This paper attempts to identify the failures o f the 1979 constitutional strategy and to prescribe solutions that also take account of contemporary claims to equality. The central argument is that there is a structural power imbalance among the diverse groups in the country that cannot be addressed by conventional liberal democratic principles and practices, and that the secularism crisis that threatens constitutionalism might not be fully resolved until the power problem is addressed.
