Contending Issues in the Niger Delta Crisis of Nigeria - Journal of ...

Samuel W. Ibodje and Fidelis Allen
governmental relations in Canada, United States of America,
Australia, South Africa, Germany and so on. In all of these countries,
a political class, shaped by the nature of their society, constitutional
regimes and generally governmental institutions in which they are
part of as well as domestic and external conditions have come to
define the pattern of intergovernmental relations.
The Nigerian Case
Discussion of intergovernmental relations in the case of Nigeria will be
limited to federal-state, state-state, federal-local and state-local. It is
significant to note that federalism in Nigeria, though highly contested
as a federation, was not a product of citizens’ consensus through a
constitution written by the people for themselves. It was the product
of the dominant political class at a definite period in the colonial
history of the country. Entrenched constitutionally as a federation in
1954 with strong regions, Nigeria has drifted to a federation with very
strong central government. This drift has been explained by the
nature of societal forces of ethnicity and advent of the oil economy on
which the governments today have come to depend for the bulk of
their revenue.
This section of the paper, therefore will focus on how the political
class has related with the political system to determine the extent of
formal institutionalization, decision-making characters and
transparency of structures of intergovernmental relations in Nigeria
since 1999.
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