Vol.:(0123456789) Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences (2021) 14:265–284 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-020-00304-4 1 3 ORIGINAL PAPER A Critique of Nigerian Federalism and Need for Restructuring Towards Achieving Vision 2030 Uwomano Benjamin Okpevra 1 Received: 31 May 2020 / Accepted: 5 October 2020 / Published online: 23 October 2020 © Fudan University 2020 Abstract This paper underscores a critique of Nigeria’s choice of a federal option, the cur- rent state of which has led to the incessant clamour, across the nation for restruc- turing. Federalism in Nigeria since 1960 was adopted to accommodate the nation’s heterogeneous culture with the sole aim of maintaining unity in diversity. The dys- functional system has been observed to be the main bane of Nigeria underdevelop- ment, instability, and absence of good governance all of which can negatively afect the achievement of a sustainable national development plan like the Vision 2030. This paper argues that Nigeria is yet to evolve a truly federal system capable of tak- ing care of its numerous challenges. Writing from a historical perspective, the paper uncovers that there are logical inconsistencies in Nigeria’s practice of federalism. What gets here is a hidden unitary framework. The call for restructuring is in a gen- eral sense borne out of some apparent degrees of foul play and disparity presently perceived by the part units emerging from defective federalism. Understood in the above is that the necessary ingredients of sustainable democracy and governance are completely lacking in Nigeria. Thus, if the proposed Vision 2030 or any other national development plan is to be accomplished, there has to be a restructuring of the dysfunctional political system; a restructuring that devolves power to the feder- ating units leaving the federal government with vital aspects like defence, foreign afairs among others; a return to the regional arrangement of the past. Keywords Nigeria · Federalism · A critique · Restructuring · Vision 2030 1 Introduction Since independence, Nigeria has embarked on four national development plans, all of which have not yielded the desired result. This abysmal failure has been attributed to her dysfunctional federal political system. In the recent past attempt * Uwomano Benjamin Okpevra ubokpevra@gmail.com; okpevra@delsu.edu.ng 1 Department of History and International Studies, Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria