Nigeria: On the Unity of Nigeria

22 July 2016
opinion

Beyond polemics, the fact is that the unity of Nigeria started being negotiated and renegotiated right from its amalgamation in 1914, and it has to be so, since the inhabitants of the amalgamated territories did not come together of their own volition in the first place. Right from independence in 1776, the unity of the United States of America has evolved through several constitutional amendments towards what their leaders refer to as a more perfect union. And from the original 13 independent states that banded together to form the Union in 1776, 37 other states have joined to reach the present composition of 50 states.

Similarly the constitutional development of Nigeria from 1922 to the present, comprising all the round table constitutional conferences, are a series of negotiations on national unity, first through the colonial phase which terminated in 1960 and the post-independence phase from 1960 to the present. In the colonial phase, the most consequential was the 1957 London constitutional conference which produced the independence constitution of 1960.

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