For over 40 years, the Nigerian state has refused to address the key question of nationhood, and transform itself properly into a nation-state with a shared consensus on its identity and future. An invidious kind of conspiracy has sustained Nigeria as a country of many nations, surrounded by the explosives of political, economic and social differences. Successive civilian governments of Shehu Shagari, Olusegun Obasanjo and now Musa Yar’adua rather than address the defects in the 1979 and 1999 Constitutions, inherited from the military, have feathered the conspiracy and imbalance in the structure of the Nigerian federation which has been, and is still inimical to its development. The Obasanjo government had tried to re-invent the Petroleum Decree of 1969, abrogated by the Babangida administration, by re-introducing the onshore-offshore dichotomy in determining the allocation of oil and gas revenue. Before then, Governors of the South-South geo-political zone had fought bitterly to get ...
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