“A nation’s future is not determined only by the people who occupy its offices, but also by the institutions, incentives and structures within which those people operate.”
On 1 October 2026, Nigeria will mark 66 years of independence. Sixty-six years is long enough for a country to have accumulated an enormous historical record, built generations of institutions, experienced military and civilian rule, survived a devastating civil war, created states and local governments, discovered and exploited vast oil reserves, returned repeatedly to democratic government, and emerged as Africa’s most populous country.
Yet the anniversary arrives with a difficult question:
After 66 years, where exactly are we going and is Nigeria’s greatest problem the people operating the system, or the architecture of the system itself?
The provocative assessment attributed to Dr. Akin Fapohunda in The Republic interview provides an appropriate starting point. His argument challenges Nigerians to look beyond the familiar presidential personalities whether Bola Tinubu, Peter Obi, Atiku Abubakar or others and examine the deeper political economy that makes control of the Federal Government extraordinarily consequential.
That question deserves serious examination.
It is not an argument that individuals do not matter. They do. Leadership matters enormously. Policies matter. Corruption matters. Electoral integrity matters. Competence matters.
But institutions create the environment in which leadership operates.
Nigeria’s 66-year journey therefore requires more than asking who should occupy Aso Rock. It requires asking why so much political, economic and administrative power is concentrated there in the first place.
Nigeria became independent on 1 October 1960 under a federal parliamentary system. The Independence Constitution gave considerable responsibilities to the regions while the Federal Government handled matters such as defence, foreign affairs, currency and customs. At independence there were three regions Northern, Western and Eastern while the Mid-Western Region was created in 1963.
This historical fact is important because today’s debate about restructuring is not an entirely new Nigerian idea.
Nigeria did not begin with today’s 36-state structure.
It began with a federation in which regions possessed substantial political and administrative responsibilities
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The constitutional evolution of the 1950s deliberately moved Nigeria toward federalism because its political leaders recognised that a country of enormous ethnic, linguistic, religious and geographical diversity required some form of territorial autonomy.
The 1963 Republican Constitution continued that federal arrangement. Historical records show that Nigeria’s regions exercised considerable authority over their internal affairs.
Then came 1966.
The military intervention fundamentally altered the trajectory of Nigerian federalism. Following the January 1966 coup, military rule suspended political institutions; later that year, Decree No. 34 moved the country toward a unitary structure. The subsequent crisis contributed to the political and constitutional upheavals that culminated in the Nigerian Civil War.
In 1967, the military government created 12 states, beginning a process of territorial restructuring that would eventually produce 19 states in 1976, 21 in 1987, 30 in 1991 and today’s 36-state structure in 1996.
The map changed.
But an important question remained:
Did the redistribution of territory necessarily produce an equally effective redistribution of political and economic power?
That question remains central to the restructuring debate.
The evolution from regions to states had legitimate objectives.
State creation responded partly to fears of domination by larger ethnic groups and demands for political inclusion by minorities. Smaller administrative units could potentially bring government closer to citizens.
But there was another consequence.
As the country moved from a relatively powerful regional system toward a highly centralised federation, more responsibilities increasingly became located at the federal level.
This created an unusual political incentive:
Control the centre, and you gain influence over a remarkably large share of national resources, institutions and policy.
That helps explain why Abuja has become more than simply Nigeria’s capital.
It has become the principal arena in which national political power is contested.
The Federal Government controls important areas including defence, foreign affairs, monetary policy, immigration, customs and significant aspects of national infrastructure and economic policy. Meanwhile, states remain heavily dependent on transfers from the federation.
The World Bank has explicitly observed that although Nigerian states possess political autonomy, they remain heavily dependent on their constitutional shares of oil and non-oil revenues collected by the federation.
This is not merely an administrative issue.
It is a political-economy issue.
Consider the Federation Account.
In April 2025 alone, ₦1.681 trillion in distributable Federation Account revenue was shared among the Federal Government, states and local governments. The Federal Government received ₦565.3 billion, states ₦556.7 billion and local governments ₦406.6 billion, alongside derivation payments.
This demonstrates both the importance and the dilemma of Nigeria’s fiscal federation.
Federation transfers enable governments across the country to pay salaries, finance infrastructure and provide services.
But dependency can also weaken the incentive to develop robust local productive economies and efficient domestic revenue systems.
The World Bank’s assessment of Nigeria’s state-level fiscal reforms is instructive: the 2018-2022 SFTAS programme used $1.5 billion in performance-based grants to encourage states to improve fiscal transparency, domestic revenue mobilisation, expenditure efficiency and debt sustainability.
The underlying lesson is significant:
Federalism cannot work optimally when political autonomy is not accompanied by sufficient fiscal responsibility.
A state that possesses political authority but depends overwhelmingly on external transfers has only partial autonomy.
Nigeria is not a failed country in the conventional sense.
Nor is it a country without enormous achievements.
It has maintained territorial integrity despite extraordinary pressures. It has sustained civilian rule since 1999 the longest uninterrupted democratic period in its post-independence history. It has developed globally competitive entrepreneurs, technology companies, creative industries, financial institutions, universities and a powerful diaspora.
The economy is also showing signs of greater macroeconomic resilience.
The World Bank reports that Nigeria’s economy grew by about 4% in 2025, with services including ICT, finance and real estate playing an important role. It also reports stronger external and fiscal positions and significant improvement in foreign reserves.
But economic growth does not automatically translate into social prosperity.
The World Bank estimates that more than 60% of Nigerians were living below the national poverty line in 2025, while the IMF reported that poverty had reached about 63% and that an estimated 27 million Nigerians experienced food insecurity in late 2025.
The National Bureau of Statistics previously found that 133 million Nigerians 63% of the population covered by its 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index were multidimensionally poor. This measure goes beyond income to capture deprivation in areas such as health, education, living standards and access to basic services.
This is the central paradox of the Nigerian story:
A country can possess enormous economic potential while millions of its citizens experience the state primarily through hardship.
Nigeria’s future cannot be understood without understanding its demography.
The World Bank estimates Nigeria’s population at approximately 237.5 million in 2025, with annual population growth of about 2.1%.
The World Bank also estimates that approximately 3.5 million people enter Nigeria’s labour force every year.
That figure creates both a warning and an opportunity.
Three and a half million new labour-market entrants every year require jobs, skills, electricity, transportation, housing, healthcare, education and functioning markets.
If Nigeria creates productive employment at scale, its demographic expansion could become one of its greatest economic advantages.
If it fails, the same demographic pressure could intensify poverty, migration, insecurity and political frustration.
Therefore, the question of Nigeria’s future is not simply:
Who will govern Nigeria?
It is:
What kind of economy will be capable of absorbing the Nigerians who will be born tomorrow?
Nigeria’s democratic challenge is not simply the conduct of elections.
It is the relationship between citizens and institutions.
Recent Afrobarometer findings are revealing. In its Nigeria Round 10 results, 64% of respondents said democracy is preferable to any other form of government, yet only 6.1% described Nigeria as a full democracy. Meanwhile, 53.7% described it as a democracy with major problems.
This distinction matters.
Nigerians have not necessarily rejected democracy.
Many appear to be questioning the quality of the democracy they experience.
The same survey found that 45.2% were “not at all satisfied” with how democracy works in Nigeria and another 37.2% were “not very satisfied.”
This should concern every political party, government and civic institution.
The danger is not necessarily that Nigerians no longer believe in democracy.
The danger is that they may increasingly distinguish between democracy as an ideal and democracy as lived experience.
The structural debate cannot be separated from corruption.
Afrobarometer’s 2025 Nigeria findings reported that 80% of Nigerians believed corruption had increased somewhat or a lot during the previous year. The survey also recorded high perceptions of corruption across several public institutions.
But corruption should not be treated merely as a moral problem.
It is also an institutional problem.
Where political offices control large pools of discretionary resources, where regulatory institutions are weak, where accountability is inconsistent and where electoral competition is expensive, political office can acquire extraordinary economic value.
This creates incentives that transcend individual personalities.
Therefore, the solution cannot simply be to tell politicians to become morally better people.
Nigeria needs institutions that make good governance easier and abuse of power harder.
This brings us to one of the most uncomfortable questions in Nigerian politics:
Why is political office so economically valuable?
When government controls access to contracts, licences, appointments, budgets, regulatory authority, land, infrastructure and public resources, competition for political power naturally becomes intense.
If political campaigns and political networks are expensive to maintain, politics can become an investment proposition.
That is dangerous.
Democracy should make public office a responsibility.
It should not transform public office into an economic asset.
The answer therefore requires more than condemning politicians.
Nigeria needs stronger political-party institutions, transparent campaign financing, enforceable conflict-of-interest rules, credible procurement systems, independent oversight and more effective sanctions for corruption.
The objective should be simple:
Make public office less profitable as a private enterprise and more valuable as a public trust.
This is where the argument about Nigeria’s political architecture becomes unavoidable.
“Restructuring” means different things to different Nigerians.
For some, it means returning to stronger regional governments.
For others, it means devolution of powers from Abuja to states.
For others, it means fiscal federalism.
Some advocate state police.
Some advocate constitutional reform.
Others favour resource control or greater derivation.
Some call for fewer constitutional responsibilities at the centre.
Others want stronger local governments.
Therefore, restructuring should not be treated as a magic word.
It must be translated into specific constitutional questions:
Who should collect which taxes?
Who should control which resources?
Who should provide which public services?
Who should maintain internal security?
How should revenue be shared?
What should remain exclusively federal?
How should minorities be protected under greater regional autonomy?
What mechanisms will prevent subnational governments from reproducing the same corruption attributed to the centre?
These are the serious questions.
This qualification is essential.
A badly governed state does not automatically become well governed because it receives greater autonomy.
A corrupt federal institution can be replaced by a corrupt state institution.
A centralised patronage system can become a decentralised patronage system.
Greater fiscal autonomy without accountability can simply move corruption closer to the citizen.
Therefore, restructuring must be accompanied by institutional reform.
Nigeria needs stronger legislatures, independent courts, professional civil services, credible electoral institutions, transparent public procurement, accountable policing, financially responsible subnational governments and empowered citizens.
The real objective should not merely be decentralisation.
It should be:
Decentralisation + accountability + fiscal responsibility + institutional capacity that’s what will give Nigeria the desire projection for its development .
Nigeria’s fiscal situation further illustrates why structural reform matters.
The Debt Management Office reported total public debt of approximately ₦152.4 trillion as of June 2025, equivalent to about US$99.7 billion at the exchange rate used by the DMO.
Debt Management Office Nigeria
The IMF’s 2026 assessment estimates public gross debt at roughly 35.4% of GDP in 2025, rising to about 36.7% in 2026, while interest payments remain a major fiscal burden.
The issue is not simply whether Nigeria has debt.
Every modern economy uses debt.
The more important question is:
What does Nigeria borrow for?
Borrowing for productive infrastructure that expands economic capacity is fundamentally different from borrowing to finance inefficient consumption.
Nigeria therefore needs a fiscal culture in which every major borrowing decision answers three questions:
What productive asset will this create?
How will it generate economic returns?
How will future generations benefit from or repay the obligation?
Nigeria’s political architecture also intersects with insecurity.
The country continues to confront banditry and kidnapping, insurgency in the North-East and separatist agitation in the South-East, according to the World Bank’s current country assessment.
Security is therefore not simply a military issue.
It is connected to poverty, unemployment, weak institutions, local grievances, justice, border management, education and the legitimacy of government.
A state that cannot reliably protect citizens cannot easily sustain public trust.
But security reform must also respect constitutionalism and human rights.
The challenge is to build institutions capable of being both strong enough to protect citizens and accountable enough not to become instruments of abuse.
66 YEARS, what have learned?
Nigeria’s history offers at least five lessons.
First: Nigeria cannot be understood through personalities alone.
Leaders matter, but institutions outlive leaders.
Presidents come and go.
Constitutions, bureaucracies, electoral systems, fiscal arrangements and political incentives remain.
Second: Nigeria’s diversity requires negotiated federalism.
The history of Nigeria’s constitutional development demonstrates that the country has repeatedly struggled to balance national unity with regional diversity.
The question is not whether Nigeria is diverse.
It is how diversity can become a source of strength rather than political suspicion.
Third: political democracy requires economic democracy.
A citizen who possesses the formal right to vote but lacks access to decent education, healthcare, employment, electricity and economic opportunity may regard democracy as distant from everyday life.
Fourth: decentralisation without accountability is insufficient.
Nigeria cannot merely move power away from Abuja.
It must also move responsibility, transparency and accountability closer to citizens.
Fifth: young Nigerians must become stakeholders, not spectators.
Nigeria’s demographic future will increasingly belong to young people.
They should not be viewed merely as voters, protesters, campaign crowds or beneficiaries.
They must become entrepreneurs, legislators, civil servants, academics, community leaders, innovators and policy-makers.
Nigeria’s next phase should be built around a new social and constitutional compact.
1. Revisit the federal structure
Nigeria should have a serious, evidence-based national conversation about the distribution of powers between the federation, states and local governments.
Not emotional restructuring.
Evidence-based restructuring.
2. Strengthen fiscal federalism
States should progressively develop productive internal economies and domestic revenue systems rather than relying overwhelmingly on Federation Account transfers.
But increased autonomy must come with transparency and measurable service-delivery obligations.
3. Reform the political-party system
Political parties should become institutions of ideas and policy rather than primarily electoral vehicles.
Internal democracy, transparent financing and ideological clarity would improve political competition.
4. Reduce the economic attraction of political office
Nigeria should strengthen campaign-finance transparency, procurement systems, asset-declaration enforcement and conflict-of-interest regulations.
5. Invest aggressively in human capital
The greatest infrastructure Nigeria can build is not only roads and bridges.
It is people.
Education, healthcare, nutrition, skills and early childhood development must become central components of national development. The World Bank’s 2026 Nigeria Development Update specifically stresses human-capital investment as essential for translating macroeconomic stabilisation into sustained improvements in livelihoods.
6. Create an economy capable of employing millions
The World Bank’s estimate of about 3.5 million new labour-force entrants annually makes job creation an existential national priority.
Agriculture, manufacturing, technology, creative industries, construction, renewable energy, logistics and services must become engines of mass employment.
7. Build credible institutions
The future of Nigeria cannot depend permanently on whether the occupant of an office is personally good or bad.
A strong country is one in which even a mediocre leader is constrained by strong institutions.
That is the true test of state-building.
No responsible analysis can predict exactly what Nigeria will become.
But current trends allow us to identify alternative pathways.
One pathway is reform without transformation: macroeconomic stability improves, but institutional weaknesses, poverty and inequality remain significant.
A second pathway is deeper structural reform: stronger fiscal federalism, better institutions, more productive states, greater private-sector investment, improved human capital and stronger democratic accountability reinforce one another.
A third pathway is reform reversal: political pressure, insecurity, fiscal stress or policy inconsistency weaken economic and institutional gains.
These are not predictions.
They are possible trajectories.
The IMF currently projects Nigerian real GDP growth at about 4.1% in 2026 and 4.3% in 2027, with growth remaining just above 4% over the medium term.
The important question is whether growth at that level will be sufficiently broad and productive to reduce poverty substantially.
GDP growth is necessary. It is not sufficient.
Nigeria needs growth that creates jobs, raises incomes, expands productive capacity and improves public services.
Perhaps the most profound question on Nigeria’s 66th Independence anniversary is not whether Nigeria has been independent for 66 years.
It is:
How independent are Nigerians from poverty, institutional failure, insecurity, unemployment, political exclusion and economic dependence?
Political independence transferred sovereignty from colonial rule to Nigerians.
But nation-building is unfinished.
The green-white-green flag represents political sovereignty.
The next stage of Nigerian independence must mean institutional sovereignty, economic productivity and human dignity.
Nigeria must move from a system in which citizens often ask, “What can government give me?” to one in which government creates the conditions under which citizens can ask, “What can I build?”
That transformation requires more than a new president.
It requires a new relationship between the citizen and the state.
So, is Nigeria’s problem the people running the system or the system itself?
After 66 years, the evidence suggests that the question cannot be reduced to either/or.
People matter.
Leadership matters.
Corruption matters.
Competence matters.
But institutions matter too.
A country with weak institutions can reproduce the same incentives under different leaders. Conversely, strong institutions can restrain poor leadership and preserve good policies beyond individual administrations.
This is why Nigeria’s future debate should move beyond the endless cycle of:
Who is coming?
Who is leaving?
Who will win?
Who will lose?
The deeper questions are:
What kind of federation do Nigerians want?
What powers should Abuja retain?
What responsibilities should belong to states and local governments?
How should national wealth be distributed?
How can political office cease to be an avenue for private accumulation?
How can democracy deliver dignity rather than merely elections?
How can Nigeria convert its enormous population into productive human capital?
And perhaps most importantly:
What kind of country should Nigeria become before its 100th Independence anniversary in 2060?
Nigeria’s 66th year should therefore not merely be another celebration of independence.
It should be an invitation to institutional introspection.
The country does not necessarily need another generation obsessed only with changing occupants of government houses.
It needs a generation prepared to examine the architecture of governance itself.
Because if the architecture remains fundamentally defective, changing the occupants may change the names on the doors without changing the experience of the people outside them.
But if Nigerians can build stronger institutions, more accountable federalism, productive subnational economies, credible elections, human-capital systems and a political culture anchored in public service, the story of the next 34 years could be radically different from the first 66.
Nigeria is not condemned to its past.
But neither will patriotism alone transform its future.
The 66th anniversary should therefore force a national question:
After six decades of independence, are we merely changing governments or are we finally prepared to change the structures that determine how government works?
That may be the most important conversation Nigeria can have as it approaches 2060 the centenary of its independence.
Cliff Stanley, Political Scientist, Public Theologian
Cliffstanley3@gmail.com,
07032826319.