I had the honour of delivering the Keynote Address at the 34th Annual Conference of the Nigerian Political Science Association (NPSA) in Lokoja. The conference theme, "Governance and Nation-Building in Nigeria: Some Reflections on Options for Policy," is relevant and timely.  The challenges of nation-building are manifesting worldwide, including our continent and country. Violent conflicts and subterranean discord and discontent are prevalent, and the revival of irredentist ethno-regional and religious identities further complicates the situation. I believe that the conference was a great opportunity to discuss these challenges and reflect on practical policy options. I salute the President of the NPSA, Professor Hassan Saliu, for his leadership and the Executive Committee's effort to mobilize the membership despite a paucity of resources and the prevailing tough economic times. I am optimistic that the NPSA will continue to thrive, and I urge all of us to work towards the continued stability and unity of our country.

1. @kfayemi @JKFayemi John Kayode Fayemi PhD.
Governance
and Nation-Building
in Nigeria
Dr. Kayode Fayemi (CON)
Visiting Professor, African Leadership Centre,
King's College, London, UK
Some Reflections on Options for Policy
34th Annual Conference of the
Nigerian Political Science
Association (NPSA), in Lokoja,
29th April, 2024
Keynote Address Delivered by:

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@kfayemi @JKFayemi John Kayode Fayemi PhD.
Governance and Nation-Building in Nigeria:
Some Reflections on Options for Policy
It is an honour and privilege to be here in Lokoja with you today on the occasion of
the34thannualconferenceoftheNigerianPoliticalScienceAssociation(NPSA).Let
mefromtheoutsetthankHisExcellency,ourhosttheGovernorofKogiState,Alhaji
Usman Ododo, for the warm welcome and hospitality he and his team have
generously extended to us. In doing so, allow me also to extend warm greetings to
His Excellency our esteemed Vice President and NumberTwo citizen of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria, Senator Kasham Shettima, His Excellency, Right Honourable
Tajudeen Abass, Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives, the National
Chairman of theAll Progressives Congress, His Excellency Dr.Abdullahi Ganduje,
the Chairmen of the Peoples Democratic Party and the Labour Party, and other
highly esteemed dignitaries present here with us.
I am aware that the organisation and hosting of this 34thAnnual Conference of the
NPSAhasinvolvednotjustaconsiderableamountofplanningbutalsoastrongdose
of creativity and innovation. I salute the Vice Chancellor and management of the
Federal University, Lokoja for the support extended to theAssociation to make this
conference a reality. I also particularly wish to pay a special tribute to the President
of the NPSA, the indefatigable Professor Hassan Saliu, for the extra mile he and the
membersofhisExecutiveCommitteewenttomobilisethemembershiptomakethis
conference happen despite a paucity of resources and the prevailing tough economic
times across the country and around the world. I must say we all owe it a duty to
ensure that thisAssociation not only survives but that it continues to thrive.
Thethemeofthe34thconferenceoftheNPSAisbothtopicalandtimely.Aroundthe
world, including our continent and country, the challenges of nation-building have
been manifest for several years now. In some cases, the challenges are actually
worsening as evidenced by the many cases of violent conflicts that are being played
out with regard to the governance of the nation-state and discontents with the
nation-building experience.

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@kfayemi @JKFayemi John Kayode Fayemi PhD.
Governance and Nation-Building in Nigeria:
Some Reflections on Options for Policy
InAfricaalone,inthelastfewyears,wehaveseenwarbreakoutinEthiopiaandthe
Sudan. We have also witnessed armed uprisings in places like Cameroun, Tchad,
Central Africa Republic, Kenya, and Mozambique even as old and long-running
conflicts in Somalia, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the Casamance in
Senegal have continued to fester in their mutation.
Furthermore, across the Sahel belt of the continent, military coups d’etat have been
carried out by segments of the armed forces with the most recent being the takeover
that happened in Niger in 2023. Beyond the Sahel, similar military interventions
have been registered in Guinea Conakry and Gabon. These developments are
unfolding in a generalised context of prolonged violent insecurity underwritten by
an assortment of self-proclaimed Jihadi groups, criminal gangs of drug, gun, and
human traffickers, and armed bands of smugglers, cattle rustlers, kidnappers, and
illegal miners.Across the arc of conflict that runs through theAfrican continent, we
have seen an intensification of violent contestations.
Even in places where violent contestations of the nation-state have not burst out into
the open, clear signs of subterranean discord and discontent are manifest that call
the continued stability and unity of many a polity into question. The revival of
irredentist ethno-regional and religious identities has been observed in various
countries, mirroring at the national level, similar trends in extremely narrow
identity politics around the world.This trend in narrow and discriminatory identity
politics has led to commentators such as the late Stephen Ellis to speak about the
“re-tribalisation” of African politics, except that what European anthropologists
pejorativelyrefertoas“tribes”intheAfricancontextare,asnotedbyArchieMafeje
and others, bigger in size than most of the groups effortlessly categorised as
“nations” in Europe and theAmericas. This, however, is an issue for another day.

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@kfayemi @JKFayemi John Kayode Fayemi PhD.
Governance and Nation-Building in Nigeria:
Some Reflections on Options for Policy
Resurgent identities of various shades have been played out aggressively even in
some of the most unlikely places where the general wisdom for a time was that they
have been among the most successful countries in the task of nation-building after
the defeat of colonialism. The cases of Tanzania and Botswana stand out in
particular. In the former, the Zanzibari nationalism that blossomed for a period
after the departure from office of the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, the father of
modern Tanzania, has been replaced in recent times by a Tangayika nationalism
that is demanding the separation of the Mainland from the Island. In the latter, the
Serowe sub-ethnic group has felt alienated from the mainstream of national politics
since the departure from power of the Khama brothers and the self-exile of Ian
Khama, the immediate past President of the country.
Old ethno-regional cleavages that have conditioned politics in places like Kenya,
Ghana, Guinea Conakry, and Guinea Bissau, to cite a few examples, have come to
occupy centrestage in their domestic governance processes and systems. Nigeria is
notexemptfromthesechallengesofnation-building.Indeed,inmorewaysthanone,
thecountryhasbeenthesitewherevirtuallyalloftheknownformsofnationalunity
challenges have been played out. From irredentist ethno-regional groups, religious
extremists, smuggling gangs, and kidnapping syndicates to violent separatist
movements,resourcecontrolmilitants,transborderlivestockthieves,andtraffickers
inpeopleandgunsthecountryhashadatasteofthevariousformsofdislocationand
dysfunction that have undermined nation-building and threatened a wholesale
systemic breakdown.
Matters have not been helped in the Nigerian case by the transformation of old
occupational conflicts between pastoralists and farmers into full-scale inter-ethnic
violencethathasrecurredacrosstheMiddleBelt/northcentralregionand spreadto
other parts of the country. The consequences of the multiple crises that have
wracked the country both simultaneously and in succession have been many and
variedbuttheycanbesummedupinonesentence:Abreakdownintrustamongthe
different groups that make up the Nigerian nation-state.

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@kfayemi @JKFayemi John Kayode Fayemi PhD.
Governance and Nation-Building in Nigeria:
Some Reflections on Options for Policy
Thissituationhasledcommentators,bothNigerianandnon-Nigerian,topredictthe
imminent“failure”,“collapse”,or“disintegration”ofthecountry.Everyyearcomes
with predictions of an anticipated collapse of the country in a game of guesses that
pass for forecasts that is akin to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.
The recurrent predictions about the imminent collapse or failure of the Nigerian
state have been bolstered and made to look credible in recent times by various
developments in the polity. The violent activities of separatist activists in the South
East and South western parts of Nigeria, vociferous revisionist contestations of the
amalgamation act of 1914, generalised discontent with the prolonged
underperformance of the Nigerian economy, heightened recrimination, insecurity,
and violence, feelings of marginalisation, exclusion, and injustice, and concerns
about various dysfunctions in the federal system are some of sources of concern
about the future prospects of the country. However, despite the dire warnings and
deliberate scare-mongering, the predictions of an imminent failure or collapse have
proved to be hasty, exaggerated, and misplaced so far. This is mainly because of the
gross underestimation of the many webs of interdependence, historical bonds of
interconnections,andcontemporaryinternet-mixturesthatareanimportantpartof
the dynamics of modern Nigeria. There is, in this, a highly researchable subject
which the NPSAmight wish to pursue.
That said, and in full acknowledgement of the existence of many underlying and
embeddedfactorsthatserveastheenduringpillarsforthecontinuedsurvivalofNigeria
asaunitedcountry,thepointcannotbedeniedthatthenation-building projecthasbeen
underasevereandworseningstrainforsometimenow.Itisanotherwayofsayingthat
thegovernmentandpoliticalactorscannotaffordtobecomplacentorindifferenttothe
demandsthathavebeenaccumulatingforsometimeforare-foundingofthebasisforthe
unity and progress of the country. For, in the end, as much as no Nigerian government
willeveraccepttopresideoverthedissolutionofthecountry,theideathattheunityofthe
country is not negotiable orits inherited frame of governance is not open to questioning
willneedtobejettisoned.

6. 6
@kfayemi @JKFayemi John Kayode Fayemi PhD.
Governance and Nation-Building in Nigeria:
Some Reflections on Options for Policy
For, as history teaches us, empires, kingdoms, and republics come and go; those political
systemsthatendureandpassthetestoftimearethosethatareadeptatrecalibratingtheir
governance arrangementstorespondinatimelyandcomprehensivemannertochanging
timesandneeds.
Recentscholarlywritings,notableamongthem -WhyNationsFail:TheOriginsofPower,
Prosperity and Poverty - by Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson among others, have
focused on what makes for successful nation-building and what drives nations to failure.
ThedriversofthecontemporarydifficultiesthatconfrontsNigeriaarevaried,thoughalso
inter-connectedinsofarastheyallpointindifferentwaystoacrisisofgovernancethathas
been allowed by acts of commission and/or omission to build up, become more
complicated, and worsen over time. As captured in popular, everyday discourses, the
various dimensions of this crisis of governance include, among others: A decline in the
moralfibreofsocietyandthecollapseofethicsinpublicandprivatelife;thespreadofthe
cankerworm of corruption in state and society; the collapse of patriotism among leaders
andfollowersalike;anallegedincompatibilityamongthevariousethnicgroupsthatwere
forced without theirconsent into an amalgamation in 1914; the decline in citizen welfare;
andtheperceivedfeelingsofmarginalisationofsectionsofthepopulace.
These popular perspectives on the nation-building challenges facing the country mostly
speaktothesymptomsofamuchdeepermalaiseinstatecraftthatdeservesmuchgreater
attention,especiallyfromthepoliticalsciencecommunity. Therootsofthismalaisecanbe
summarised as comprising: The failure to build, consolidate, and popularise a broad
national leadership consensus on the basis of which actions and performance can be
assessed; the degradation of the basic state-society social bargain on the basis of which
citizenship and leadership can be nurtured and advanced; a paucity of leadership vision
thatembracedaspartofalong-terminvestmentinthequestfornationaltransformation;
the collapse of the national civil service system as a factor of cohesion, coherence, and
continuity in the state and nation-building process; a crisis of population mobility within
the country that has fed a dynamic of distrust; and the twin problems of poverty and
inequalitythatserveasfodderforthealienationofasignificantswatheofthepopulace.

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@kfayemi @JKFayemi John Kayode Fayemi PhD.
Governance and Nation-Building in Nigeria:
Some Reflections on Options for Policy
To the above-mentioned factors that underpin the governance malaise facing the
country must be added the unfortunate trend in extreme parochialism in the
administration of public affairs that has undermined the effective and conscious
management of national diversity.This, in turn, has eroded the sense of belonging in
thepolityandfedintoopenandsilentformsofdissentanddisloyaltyamongsections
of the populace. In the absence of a consistent and an expansive economic growth
record over the long period, dissent and disloyalty have worsened and are ossifying
into a culture of mutual recrimination and distrust that are detrimental to the
nation-building agenda.The zero sum nature of elite competition forpowerhas also
compounded the problems of nation-building, producing as it does a negative
incentive system whereby personality prevails over ideas, institutions are hijacked
and undermined, informal networks of power and privilege trump inclusive
institutions and merit.
The task of nation-building is not a one-off orstatic exercise but is rathera dynamic
and permanent work in progress There is no experience of nation-building that is
perfect from the outset and remains so despite changing times and circumstances.
However, the many proposals that have been making the rounds in Nigerian circles
about how to overcome the contemporary threats to unity and stability have hardly
been helpful in restoring the ideals of nation-building. In fact, if anything, they have,
in some instances, in their rigidity and dogmatism been reduced to
counter-productive slogans and cliches. The popular proposals include the
convening of a sovereign national conference; the adoption of major constitutional
amendments; and the redesign of the federal arrangement to make it less
centralised.Although in the normal order of things, these proposals may not in and
of themselves be wrong and I, equally, subscribe to some of them, what is
problematic is the assumption that they represent magic bullets which once adopted
will automatically resolve all extant problems of nation-building. That is far from
being the case.

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@kfayemi @JKFayemi John Kayode Fayemi PhD.
Governance and Nation-Building in Nigeria:
Some Reflections on Options for Policy
Aswecollectivelyreflectontheoverarchingthemeandpurposeofthisconference,it
seemedtomeimportantandnecessarytoreiterate thatnocountryintheworldand
in human history was created as a fully and permanently united entity from the
outset. This is as true for multi-ethnic and multi-religious countries as it is true for
those that are thought to be more homogenous. Indeed, in every country in our
world, the task of managing diversity and difference in order to forge a common
purpose and vision around which to rally the citizenry is a permanent condition of
life - and a constant demand on leadership. Unity is never given ab initio or
permanently; it requires to be nurtured and worked at constantly and on an
on-going basis.
In the same way that unity is not an automatic given that can be taken for granted,
so also is disunity not a fatalistic inevitability into which we are locked in perpetuity.
No people are condemned to a life of permanent and perpetual disunity.
Imperfections and failings in any union manifest themselves in various forms and
shapes. Differences and disagreements exist alongside cleavages and contradictions.
We must learn as a people to accept that these are hard facts and features of any
polity. Properly handled, they may be turned into important drivers of a
socio-political dynamic that propels countries forward in their march of progress.
Mismanaged and compounded, they may fester and become threats to stability and
togetherness. Disunity of the kind that goes behind difference and divergence and
which threatens violent collapse is, therefore, a mark of failings in governance, not
the inevitable fate to which a people are condemned.
Therefore in our search for options for policy, and in full recognition of the fact that
no union anywhere in the world is complete and perfect, every effort at advancing
the task of nation-building must begin with the ambition of building on yesterday’s
successes in order to secure tomorrow’s progress. Nation-building does not happen
in a historical vacuum.

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@kfayemi @JKFayemi John Kayode Fayemi PhD.
Governance and Nation-Building in Nigeria:
Some Reflections on Options for Policy
Governance responses are, therefore, also tailored to balance between the ambitions
and hopes of the populace for a greater and better future, and the pragmatic
pathways that are open to the citizenry for the achievement of a more perfect union
in a manner that is consensual, at a velocity that is sustainable, and with a purpose
thatsatisfiestheneedsofthemaximumnumberofthemembersofsociety.Proposed
solutions that are created out of spite, hatred, or irredentist aspirations are hardly
the stuff of which forward-looking investments in nation-building are made.
In the light if the foregoing, I urge us to refrain from being overly prescriptive in our
search for options for policy. Instead, I would like to extend an invitation to the
Nigerian political science community to lead us in a sober, historically-grounded,
and well-researched governance options through which dysfunction, waste, and
retrogression in the nation-building project may be arrested and the mix of
incentives that can unleash the much needed renewal in all aspects of our national
life designed and applied. I understand that in theTowerof Babel that the debate on
the future of the nation-state has become, the task of sifting the wheat from the chaff
will not be an easy one but it has to be done with patience and purpose, and with an
understandingthatanygovernancereformsthataretableddonotleavethecountry
weaker or more divided than it already is. This is the historic challenge of our times
and I know we have the wealth of experience and the intellectual acumen among us
to meet the challenge with originality and innovation. That is one way that we can
continue to honour the pioneers and exemplars from Billy Dudley to Sam
Oyovbaire, Elochukwu Amuchaezi to Ibrahim Gambari and Isifanus Zabadi to
AlabaOgunsanwoandmanyotherslikethemwhobridgedthegapsbetweentheory
and practice, helping to solve problems with historically grounded, political science
scholarship.
I thank you for your attention and wish you a successful 34th annual conference.