Nigeria’s troubled experiment with over-centralised federalism came under intense scrutiny at a national dialogue in Abuja, where former Ambassador Godknows Igali and Convener of the Concerned Citizens Assembly, Deacon Owolabi Oladejo, mounted a fresh case for restructuring, with a proposal for the creation of 15 regions emerging as one of the most striking ideas in the debate.

The speakers argued that Nigeria’s worsening economic pressures, insecurity, weak institutional confidence and growing regional discontent could no longer be addressed by changing political leadership alone.

They said the deeper problem lies in the structure of the federation itself.

Their message was unmistakable: Nigeria does not need to be dismantled; it needs to be redesigned to work.

Igali, a former diplomat, delivered one of the sharpest assessments of the country’s federal arrangement, arguing that Abuja has accumulated powers that should ordinarily belong to the federating units.

He contended that the result has been a federation in which governments increasingly compete for access to federal resources instead of competing to produce wealth.
Igali traced the beginning of the problem to the military intervention of 1966, which, he said, progressively weakened the regional federalism that had characterised the First Republic.

He recalled a period when the Western, Northern and Eastern regions competed in agriculture, education, industrial development and infrastructure.

“We must correct the damage of 1966,” he said.
The former ambassador pointed to the agricultural pyramids that once stood as symbols of productivity in Northern Nigeria.

“Where are the pyramids?” he asked, arguing that their disappearance reflected the wider transformation of Nigeria from a productive federation into an allocation-dependent system.

His concern was that when governments can survive primarily on money distributed from the centre, the incentive to build sustainable local economies diminishes.

“When everybody is waiting for national finance, people are not producing,” he said in substance.

The emerging call for 15 regions injects a concrete dimension into a restructuring debate that has often remained at the level of slogans.

Supporters of the idea envisage larger, economically viable federating units with sufficient autonomy to develop their resources, attract investment, create jobs and provide services while remaining part of one Nigerian federation.

The proposition also seeks to address the argument that Nigeria’s current 36-state structure has produced too many relatively small administrative units, many of which remain heavily dependent on federal allocations.

But the proposed regional model would inevitably require Nigerians to confront difficult questions over boundaries, revenue sharing, resource ownership, political representation, minority protection and the future role of the existing states.

Those questions, speakers suggested, should be resolved through dialogue rather than imposed from Abuja.

Oladejo took the argument further, describing restructuring as a national survival strategy rather than a political slogan.

He warned that Nigeria could not continue operating a system in which the Federal Government carries enormous responsibilities while states and local governments struggle with limited fiscal and administrative autonomy.

“Nigeria needs restructuring—not as a political slogan, but as a national survival strategy,” he declared.

He called for a new federal compact based on stronger regions, fiscal responsibility and constitutional reform.

For Oladejo, the objective is not to weaken Nigeria but to give its component parts enough space and responsibility to develop.

He described the desired arrangement as one built on “autonomy with responsibility, freedom with accountability, competition with cooperation.”

The restructuring advocates also questioned why security, policing and other functions remain so heavily concentrated at the federal level despite the vastly different security realities confronting Nigeria’s communities.

Igali backed decentralised policing, citing federal countries where policing responsibilities are shared among different levels of government.

He argued that properly regulated sub-national police systems could improve intelligence gathering and enable security agencies to respond more quickly to local threats.

The same principle, he said, should apply to development.

Local governments, he argued, must cease being mere salary-paying administrative centres and become productive institutions capable of driving grassroots development.

Perhaps the most politically significant message from the dialogue was that restructuring cannot be left exclusively to politicians.

“The people must talk. National Assembly can be there, but the people must talk,” Igali said.

Oladejo similarly insisted that the restructuring conversation must be citizen-led and insulated from partisan and sectional interests.

This means that the proposed 15-region structure would have to survive a much bigger test than political endorsement: public acceptance across Nigeria’s diverse communities.

The speakers rejected the suggestion that restructuring is necessarily a prelude to Nigeria’s disintegration.

Instead, they argued that a more balanced federation could actually strengthen national unity by reducing the competition for control of Abuja.

The idea is to make regions sufficiently autonomous to pursue their interests while retaining common institutions for national defence, foreign affairs, monetary policy and other genuinely federal responsibilities.

It is a model that seeks to replace dependency with productivity and central control with negotiated cooperation.
The restructuring debate was reinforced by the message of the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, represented by Ms Doris Lar.

Fagbemi stressed that Nigeria’s future must rest on peace, justice and inclusion, warning that economic progress alone would not be enough.

“Without peace, development is fragile. Without justice, peace is incomplete. And without inclusion, progress cannot be sustained,” he said.

His intervention added another layer to the restructuring debate: whatever constitutional arrangement emerges must not only promote economic efficiency but also protect rights, strengthen democratic institutions and ensure that citizens feel included in the Nigerian project.

What emerged from the dialogue was not simply another demand for constitutional reform.

It was a challenge to Nigeria’s governing philosophy.

For decades, the country has wrestled with the contradiction of a federation that is constitutionally decentralised in some respects but operationally dependent on an extraordinarily powerful centre.

The 15-region proposal now places a concrete alternative on the table.

Whether it becomes the foundation of a new federal arrangement or merely another chapter in Nigeria’s long restructuring debate will depend on what happens next.

But the message from Abuja was clear:

Nigeria’s greatest threat may not be its diversity. It may be a system that has failed to turn that diversity into productive strength.

And for the advocates of restructuring, the time has come to stop asking how Nigeria can preserve the existing structure—and start asking what structure can finally make Nigeria work.