Introduction

1The Cambridge English Dictionary defines a border as “a line that divides one country or place from another.” This definition tends to adopt a strong inter-national perspective, where the border “is a distinct physically marked perimeter encircling the nation-state. It defines the national identity of the population living within that perimeter in territorial terms” (Pratt Ewing 1998, 262). Our belief is that borders can equally be conceived in intra-national terms. We cannot but agree with Vaugh-Williams when he says that there are many different types of borders: divisions along ethnic, national or racial lines, class-based forms of stratification, regional and geographical differences as well as religious, cultural and generational boundaries to mention just a few (Vaugh-William 2009).

2If by border is meant “territorial dividing lines as well as socio-cultural boundaries” (Naples and Mendez 2015, 2), Nigeria provides a very good example of a country where there are many bordering and “othering” practices. There is a plethora of discourses, processes and practices which create spaces, demarcations and sometimes disconnections in the relations between some social categories, a situation which irremediably establishes binary oppositions between the concerned categories. There is for example gender bordering/othering in many communities where there are socially and historically prescribed roles and role expectations for men and women, the latter being usually disempowered in predominantly patriarchal dispensations. There is equally religious bordering/othering with some formal distance maintained between Muslim and Christian faiths and their respective followers, leading sometimes to violent clashes. Another form of demarcation relates to generational bordering/othering with different codes of conduct clearly established for the young and the elderly in many communities.1 It is impossible to ignore ethno-linguistic and ethno-cultural bordering/othering, Nigeria being home to more than 300 distinct languages and ethnic groups, each having negative stereotypes of the others2. Then there is of course politico-administrative bordering, a last category of bordering/othering practices which is the focus of our study.3 We are interested in this category of bordering practices in Nigeria, because the establishment of political and administrative areas and territories within the country has tended to be informed more by overt political considerations than by those of administrative and managerial efficiency. In other words, the lines dividing sub-national (as well as sub-regional) units of political and administrative action in reality reflect a political map, where politics and space interact, where power and territory go hand in hand. There is a plethora of endo-Nigerian subnational entities which are strong identity markers. The ways boundaries between these are established, fortified and/or redrawn, translate the changing nature of the geography of political power, its contest, distribution, balance and use in the country. The creation of federated States has led to the establishment of territorially-based identities, which are multiplied as the borders between states are modified and additional states created.4

3In terms of the interaction between geography and politics, with a total land area of about 923,768 square kilometres, Nigeria is divided geographically into three “natural” regions by two large rivers, the rivers Niger and Benue.

Fig. 1. Topography Map of Nigeria

4These three “natural” regions have always been referred to as the Northern, Western and Eastern regions. This “natural” tripodal structure has taken a very significant political coloration because each of the three regions is home to one of the three major ethno-cultural groupings that have engaged in protracted competition, sometimes degenerating into conflict, for access to and control of national political, administrative and economic resources: the Hausa/Fulani in the North, the Yoruba in the West and the Ibo in the East. Inter-regional and inter-communal relations in Nigeria, which is said to be one of the most deeply divided states in Africa, have therefore always been problematical (Ojo 2009a, 384). This is because in addition to the three major regional ethnic groups, there is a plethora of others, qualified as “minority ethnic groups”, the number varying from 250 to 370. The creation of a sense of belonging to a Nigerian “nation” by such a diversity of ethno-cultural communities has hardly been easy going, a protracted three-year civil war between 1967 and 1970 against Biafran irredentism being proof of things falling apart between these communities, to borrow the words of a famous Nigerian writer, the late Chinua Achebe.5

5In an attempt to aggregate the multiplicity of ethno-cultural entities in a single stable post-colonial nation-state, the federal solution was adopted because it was thought to be the most appropriate mechanism to give some self-governing prerogatives to sub-national ethno-cultural units, while holding all these together in an all-encompassing federal Republic. Our thesis is that though institutionally designed to aggregate the different communities in the country, the practice of Nigerian federalism, which has in reality become a consociational power-sharing mechanism, has led to some form of distance and estrangement between such communities.6 On the one hand, governmental stability has been ostensibly gained and endemic inter-communal violence contained. On the other hand, because all the federated units are engaged in an open battle for access to and control of federal centres of power, consociationalism has disabled rather than enabled strong inter-state and therefore inter-communal rapport.

6We will try to develop our thinking in five sections. In the first, we will try to examine the origin and foundation of federalism in Nigeria. Secondly, we will examine in detail the practice of Nigerian federalism today. We will pay attention to elements such as ‘federal character’, indigeneity, and statism/localism. We will then look at Nigeria as a fragmented state, where borders between states on the one hand, and between local government areas within states on the other hand, have been transformed de facto into real boundaries between communities, access to resources provided by public authorities being closed to some and open to others. We will conclude by drawing attention to how the borders between states and the way each state is governed have led to the classification of Nigerians into “insiders” or “outsiders”, indigenes or settlers/“aliens”, a phenomenon which has complicated nation-building.

I. The Foundation and Origin of Nigerian Federalism

7The raison d’être behind the introduction and continued use of the federal territorial structure in Nigeria has always been to provide a feeling of selfhood and self-government to the major ethno-cultural communities within the country on the one hand, and on the other to ensure that no one group monopolized the instruments of state power to the detriment of others. The guiding principle was that granting a measure of self-government to each major component of the country was the sufficient condition for maintaining the unity of the whole. This is why all the experiments of a unitary form of government, including those tried either during the late colonial period by Donald Cameron, Governor-general of Nigeria from 1931 to 1935, or by the short-lived military regime of Major-General Aguiyi Ironsi from January to July 1966, failed because of protests from many communities in the country.

8The need to provide adequately, within the unity of the nation, for the diverse elements which make up the country, has thus informed how the federal arrangement has been conceived, applied and modified in Nigeria to satisfy “the necessity of effecting a compromise between the demands of centrifugal and centripetal forces in the multinational state” (Elaigwu 2007, 13). This has had far reaching consequences on inter-communal cooperation to the extent that the main yardstick used to demarcate states has always been ethno-cultural rather than geographical (rivers, mountains etc) or historical (existence or non-existence of previous contacts). A cursory look at the principles used to negotiate the borders and boundaries between these sub-national units lends credence to the assertion that what was objectively sought was not rapprochement and proximity but rather distance between the various sub-national communities which were given separate political and administrative identities.7 Before analysing how the borders were defined, it is perhaps necessary to show three maps corresponding to three out of the seven phases of the structuring of inter-state borders in Nigeria: Nigeria with three regions (1960-1963), Nigeria with four regions (1963-1967), Nigeria with 12 states (1967-1976), Nigeria with 19 states (1976-1987), Nigeria with 21 states (1987-1991), Nigeria with 30 states (1991-1996) and Nigeria with 36 states (1996 to date). These three phases were chosen because they correspond to three important periods in the political history of Nigeria: the structure inherited at independence in 1960, the structure that prevented and forestalled the total disintegration of Nigeria in 1967 and the structure today.

Fig. 2. Map of Nigeria showing three regions. Phase 1 (1960-1963)

9The three regions corresponded to territories where the three major ethnic groups in the country are located, the Hausa-Fulani in the north, the Yoruba in the west and the Ibo in the east. The three-region structure was an easy option adopted by the departing colonialists, who refused to accede to the demands expressed by key nationalists such as Nnamdi Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo for the establishment of more than three regions. The key criteria suggested by both founding fathers of Nigerian independence was cultural and linguistic affinities (Awolowo 1947; Elaigwu 2007, 149).

10The use of the ethno-cultural criteria to demarcate the borders between the sub-national units meant that other communities, called minorities, entertained fears about their possible marginalisation within the established units. Their protracted demands for states of their own generated disruptive centrifugal pulls could potentially lead to the political and territorial disintegration of post-independent Nigeria. Such demands for autonomy and self-rule were partially satisfied by the creation of twelve states in 1967 by the military government headed by Yakubu Gowon, who wished to kill two birds with a stone. First, contain Biafran irredentism by creating states within the territory which wanted to secede from Nigeria. Secondly, satisfy long standing demands for regional autonomy.

Fig. 3. Map of Nigeria showing twelve states. Phase 3 (1967-1976)

11In creating the twelve states, the key criteria used for reconfiguring the territorial structure was equally ethnic and linguistic affinity. This seemed to buttress the thinking by Awolowo, one of the founding fathers of Nigeria, who said that “If a country is bi-lingual or multi-lingual, the Constitution must be Federal, and the constituent States must be organised on a linguistic basis”.8 Consequently, there appeared to be a continuing belief in the necessity to maintain national unity through differentiation and separate governance by established ethno-cultural entities. Such a thinking however created newer demands by newer ethnic minorities who wished to become self-governing themselves. Response to these demands led to creation of 7 additional states in 1976, 2 additional states in 1987, 9 additional states in 1991, and six additional states in 1996, leading to the thirty-six states structure that exists today.

Fig. 4. Map of Nigeria showing 36 states. Phase 7 (1996 to date)

12We thus see an amoeba-like reproduction of sub-national units and an accompanying modification of the boundaries between these, in order to reduce inter-ethnic conflicts, deriving from a winner-take-all form of competition for nationally generated and distributed resources. One of the recurrent complaints lodged by groups demanding the creation of new states is the neglect they think their groups suffer in the distribution of political, administrative and economic resources as the demand by the Ekiti sub-ethnic group within the Yoruba in the western part of Nigeria for the creation of an Ekiti state out of the old Ondo state amply demonstrates (Jadesola n.d.).

13The result of the multiplication of states is the transformation of each state into a water-tight political, administrative and economic space where not all residents have the same rights or equal access to state services. Apart from some inter-regional or inter-tribal marriages, very few attempts have been made to subvert or cross these inter-state borders which seem to have been implicitly and explicitly accepted if not reinforced.

14There is an implicit reinforcement of the notion of separation and inter-state differentiation by the application of attempts at national integration such as the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme. The guiding philosophy behind this programme is to oblige all university graduates less than thirty years old to “serve” the Nigerian nation for one year, by accepting to work in a state other than their state of origin. Commitment to guest states by NYSC members has been found to be extremely deceptive. According to a study done by Ajadi and Alade-Yussuf on the activities of NYSC members in Oyo state, “it has been observed that most NYSC members were not committed to their primary assignment, thus, performing relatively low in their place of primary assignment. This can be traced to low levels of job satisfaction, poor motivation as a result of poor emolument in the work placement” (Ajadi and Alade-Yusuf 2016, 4). Another study by Oluwalogbu concluded that “less than half of NYSC participants see the programme as an instrument of national integration” (Oluwalogbu 2019, 13).

15In addition to the implicit recognition of the borders between states by symbolical and integrative measures such as the NYSC programme, there is also an explicit reinforcement of these borders by the use of mechanisms such as the policy of “federal character” in the distribution of top national political and administrative positions on the one hand, and the use of the policy of “indigeneity” in the distribution of advantages and resources within states on the other hand. Both policies, federal character and indigeneity, are contained in various sections of the 1999 Nigerian constitution. These two concepts tend to confirm if not reinforce the borders between the states to the extent that the separation between states is accepted, internalized and even jealously guarded by some. We will now focus our attention on these disintegrative elements.

II. Federal Character and the Spatial Differentiation of Nigeria

16Rather than contest inter-state separation and encourage inter-state rapprochement, the use of the federal character principle as a key yardstick in the recruitment of top national political and administrative actors has tended to reinforce the borders between states by making people aware of who comes from where in the composition of federal executive and administrative bodies. The use of the federal character principle ensures that there is no blurring of or porosity between the borders of neighbouring states since each state has been transformed into a water-tight constituency for entrance into top national executive positions.

17The principle of Federal character is enshrined in the provisions of the 1999 Federal Constitution of Nigeria. Section 14 subsection 3 of the constitution states that:

The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the Federal Character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few States or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that Government or any of its agencies.

18In order to guarantee the application of these principles, The Federal Character Commission (FCC), a Federal Agency, was established by an Act of Parliament. Its role is to ensure the enforcement of the federal character principle not only in the recruitment of key executive and administrative actors but also to ensure inter-state equity in the distribution of major social services, goods, economic amenities, infrastructure and equipment established by the federal government. The application of the principle of federal character is therefore first and foremost distributive. The primary role is not to enhance the efficiency of how the federal government governs but rather to ensure that the composition of bodies that have the authority to manage public problems reflect the composition of the federated units. The key objective sought is therefore not managerial but political, since the executive branch of government is now given a representative specular role.

19The distributive element is defined in two categories. First there is the obligation for indigenes from each state to constitute a given proportion or minimum percentage of federal executive and administrative positions. Where states are unable to provide the necessary skilled personnel to fill in positions reserved for them, a second distributive yardstick is used, that of zones. The thirty-six states are assembled into six zones: the North-Central with six states and the Federal Capital Territory, the North-East with six states, the North-West with seven states, the South-East with five states, the South-South with six states and the South-West with six states. Positions that cannot be filled by “indigenes” of a particular state are awarded to the zone to which the given state belongs. The objective is to give each of the constituent federated units a sense of belonging to the federation by ensuring their equitable representation in organs of the federation. The principle of Federal Character is thus supposed to be a remembering strategy, an attempt to ensure inter-state accord and marriage in a stable federal entity.

20The application of the principle of Federal character has in reality served to reinforce the borders between states because each state is in competition with the others for the procurement of federal offices and especially key federal offices. A study by Ozoigbo has concluded that most of the main Ministries such as Defence and Internal Affairs have been consistently held by people from the states located in the northern part of the country, which has produced most of the Presidents who have governed Nigeria since independence. The northern region has globally more inhabitants than the south and this gives it a political edge when it comes to electing national political leaders. According to Ozoigbo, “Another point worth mentioning as I come to the end of this section is the qualitative composition of the cabinets according to the constituent units of the federation. By this I mean, how far has the issue of important portfolios been federally distributed? Important or juicy portfolios as said earlier on are determined by how the ruling government sees it and high budgetary allocation. Generally, a face value analysis reveals that the North has been dominating” (2007).

21The federal character principle is thus an inter-regional/inter-communal consociational power sharing device meant to reduce inter-regional and inter-communal conflicts.9 Unfortunately, as a power-sharing device, the principle is by definition not consensual but divisive. The attempt to engage in an inter-state, (between the thirty-six states) inter-zonal (between the six zones) and inter-regional (between the “northern” and “southern” regions of the country) balancing policy has served to create inter-communal distance rather than proximity. It has established a divisive tug-of-war between communities, states, zones and regions for the acquisition of scarce national resources. The effects are quite disastrous. First, many qualified personnel who are refused appointment to positions due to their origins, are not only demotivated but bear a grudge against those appointed in their place and the states these come from. There have been unending requests by important spokespeople from the three “southern” zones for a rethinking of the existence and structure of the Nigerian federation as it is today and the possibility of granting some measure of resource control and “sovereignty” to the South, which can then develop at its own pace. What is unsaid but clearly implied is that economic and political modernization of States in southern Nigeria have been hindered by the shackles of what many qualify as northern domination, an innuendo that translates the gulf that has been created between many Nigerian communities.

22Federal character equally widens the distance between communities because of its effects on citizenship. By clearly drawing attention to the fact of being an “indigene” of a state as a primary criterion for appointment into national offices, so as to guarantee a feeling of belonging by all groups to the federated nation, the defining criteria for citizenship in Nigeria is clearly sub-national rather than national. This conclusion emanates from our observation that it is the sub-national level that has become the primary level of political identification for individuals and groups. It is paradoxically the level that gives national visibility to people from particular regions of the country and in so doing, protects their rights and privileges in the national community. It is important to examine the question of indigeneity in more detail.

III. Indigeneity and the Reinforcement of Inter-state Borders

23The principle of indigeneity goes together with that of federal character because the first is one of the key criteria to be used in the application of the second. The legislative instrument voted in 1996 to establish the Federal Character Commission, whose role was to ensure the application of the federal character principle in federal appointments and the distribution of federal amenities, clearly states that “The best and most competent persons shall be recruited from each State of the Federation to fill positions reserved for the indigenes of that State or the Federal Capital Territory”. The same legislative instrument goes on to define an “indigene” as “a person who is an indigene of one of the local governments in that State: provided that no person shall lay claim to more than one State or to a State and the Federal Capital Territory”. In the same vein, an indigene of a local government is defined as “a person a) either of whose parents or any of whose grandparents was or is an indigene of the local government concerned; or b) who is accepted as an indigene by the local government: provided that no person shall lay claim to more than one local government”. An individual is accepted as an indigene when the local government awards an indigeneity certificate to him or her, a procedure that has become largely polluted by corruption and payment of bribes.

24The use of the principle of indigeneity has had far-reaching consequences on the maintenance of the border between states and between local governments within states. Rather than encourage the transgression of the borders between state and local government jurisdictions, indigeneity has resulted in the intensification, consolidation and sedimentation of these borders. State borders take on a new meaning since they become boundaries of exclusion and inclusion, each state (or local government unit within states) being transformed into a theatre where there is an orchestrated practice of regulating the distribution of rights and advantages on the one hand, and constraints on the other hand, to people based on their primordial territorial, cultural and linguistic attachments. Each state or local government is transformed into a de facto “homeland” in which a hierarchy of rights is established between two categories of residents: indigenes and settlers. The former has unlimited and unconditional access to the resources distributed by the state, while the latter, qualified as foreigners irrespective of how long they have lived and worked in the state (or local government) have limited access. Indigeneity has thus heightened inter-state (and inter-local government as well as inter-ethnic) distance and differentiation because it is isolationist rather than accommodative in the area of inter-group relations. There is a political and administrative categorisation of people into insiders and outsiders, the latter being openly discriminated against in many areas. For example, in Sokoto state located in the north-western part of Nigeria, non-indigenous parents once had to pay higher school fees than their indigenous counterparts, a policy that was only stopped by a newly elected State Governor in 2008, who introduced a flat rate for all parents.

25Indigeneity is thus oppositional rather than cooperative when examined in the light of inter-group relations. It is divisive, dis-amalgamating and dis-integrative because it establishes a hierarchy of citizenship in the country. There is a very wide gap between the theory and the practice of citizenship rights in Nigeria, if by citizen rights we mean equal access to power and those resources needed to ensure decent livelihood by all the inhabitants of a nation state irrespective of their origins.10 On the one hand, the 1999 Nigerian Constitution clearly guarantees a number of fundamental rights to all its citizens. The provisions on Citizenship and Fundamental Rights are contained in chapters 3 and 4 respectively, including the right to freedom from discrimination, the right to freedom of movement, the right to acquire and own immovable property and full residence rights for every citizen in all parts of the Federation.

26The provisions of the constitution are defeated by the insidious distinction between natives and non-natives, the former having full residence rights and the latter being denied these rights. State scholarships are given to one category and denied the other. Permanent employment is offered to one category, while only temporal or contract appointments are offered to the other. Admission into schools of higher learning is made very easy to the children of one category while it is a real tug-of-war for children of the other category. Access to land and landownership is simplified for one category while prohibited to or rendered very difficult for the other. Social welfare amenities are open and accessible to one category while inaccessible to the other. Rather than citizenship being national and all encompassing, it is regional, local, situational and exclusionary.

27Indigeneity has led to communities and their spokespeople believing that states or local government areas belong to them and to them only. The city of Jos in Plateau state is one of the theatres of incessant inter-communal conflicts between the native (Berom) and settler (Hausa-Fulani) communities. A Governor of the state during the Second Republic (1979-1983), Mr Solomon Lar, “saw his mission as emancipating the indigenes from the unfair dominance of the Hausa-Fulani settlers in commerce, and appointments to traditional institutions. He subsequently restructured chieftaincy institutions to create room for an indigene to be appointed or upgraded many stools occupied by the indigenes” (Abimbola and Alao 2008, 105).

28Indigeneity has thus created an enormous wedge between communities which have been transformed into rivals for scarce but allocatable resources. The history of contemporary Nigeria is replete with deadly inter-communal conflicts generated by the fight between indigenes and settler communities for access to instruments of social, economic and political well-being. Such conflicts are deadly because most of the time, the indigene/settler dichotomy corresponds to other dichotomies: religious (christian versus muslim), ethnic (majority versus minority ethnic groups), forms of residence (sedentary versus pastoral communities) etc. The result is a very high number of supposedly indigene/settler conflicts that were in reality religious and ethno-cultural. For example, it is recorded that between May 1999 and 2004, more than 89 extremely violent indigene/settler and ethno-religious conflicts with very high death tolls were recorded in Nigeria with two states in the north, Kaduna and Plateau states being the worst hit by such conflicts (Alubo 2006, 9). The distinction operated between indigenes (“sons of the soil”) and settlers and the de facto hierarchy this establishes between citizens, has had very notable effects on the maintenance of the borders between states (and local government units within states). The maintenance of such borders has been compounded by the phenomenon of “statism”.

IV. “Statism” and Dis-amalgamation

29States represent a territorial aspect of power sharing. The creation and recreation of states has an instrumental dimension in many different respects. First, it is an instrument for elite pacification. It is the result of consensus by members of the political class to create political fiefdoms, each member, after being satisfied with obtaining his or her fiefdom, becoming less hostile, less combative and less aggressive towards the machinery of state power. The more states are created, the more members of the political elite are satisfied and thus the more they are open to negotiating political and administrative advantages and constraints on a less separatist and irredentist level.

30Secondly, the creation and recreation of states in Nigeria is an instrument to pacify well-defined ethno-cultural communities, which are implicitly as well as explicitly engaged in a competition to see which among them has the higher or highest number of states. The thinking is that the higher number of states created within such ethno-cultural communities, the better off they would be because of a higher number of federally allocated resources going to them. In a study on territorial power sharing in Nigeria, Nwachukwu Orji identifies five politico-ethno-cultural blocks in Nigeria and compares the number of states each has been able to negotiate and attract (2008, 102–103). The five blocks correspond to three dominant ethnic majority blocks (The North, the West (Yoruba) and the East (Ibo) and two minority ethnic blocks (the Middle Belt in central Nigeria and the Niger Delta in southern Nigeria). The results of his research make very interesting reading and can be presented in the following table.

31The above table, adapted from Orji’s study, provides a very interesting insight into what we qualify as the central element in the reconfiguration of the borders between sub-national units in Nigeria, through the balkanization of existing units to create additional ones. This element is the need to maintain some form of balance between the relative numbers of states in each of the ethno-cultural blocks. The balancing is thus horizontal rather than vertical. In other words, the number of states created is not a function of demands formulated by particular communities for some form of autonomy from the centre, but rather by demands by ethno-cultural elites in particular regions to have an increase in the number of states in their regions of origin in the same proportion as the increase in the other regions. This form of inter-regional competition for state creation can be seen in the complaint by some communities in the Niger Delta block after the increase of the number of states from twenty-one to thirty in 1991. In a news item reported in one Nigerian newspaper, The Guardian in 1994, some spokespersons from Rivers state complained in the following manner: “the people of Rivers State feel that they are losing something vital because, in the past, they were one out of 12 and, today, they are one out of 30. They feel that the other parts of Nigeria are enjoying greater resources than them because of the new states created” (The Guardian 1994).

32The agitation for states is not only linked to increasing the percentage of federal resources that are automatically directed to the territories encompassed by each ethno-cultural block but also to the fact that states once created become springboards for national political career building. States are thus paradoxically an instrument for vertical political mobility since they provide central and national political visibility and influence for peripheral and local/regional politicians. There is statism or automatic recourse by local and regional political actors to states because states are a political resource since the local/regional actors become transformed into spokespeople for their states at the national level. Once at the national level, they are equally better placed to protect the interests of their states and to bargain with their colleagues from other states for the distribution of federal socio economic amenities.

33Statism has a second dimension, which is the use of the state as a differentiating identity peddler. This relates to the question of indigeneity, which we explored earlier on. The award of state government contracts is usually won exclusively by indigenes of the state. States are used as identity markers because people who come from the same state are naturally less wary of one another than people who come from different states. An element of distrust is more likely to appear in discussions between people who come from different states, especially if these states are located in different geo-political zones, than if the individuals involved come from the same state. There is a very conscious notion of “my state” and “my home” affecting every Nigerian who lives outside his state of origin especially because their status as non-indigenes is openly acknowledged by public authorities in the host state (Adetiba 2013). In a study by Tsuwar and Asongo, the importance of statism or the belief in state identification as a primary measure of selfhood is said to be “one of the reasons why such Nigerians go home to build a house in their ancestral home, marry a wife or register back home to vote. In fact, even the dead are rarely buried outside their states of origin” (Tsuwar and Asongo 2013, 37–49).

34Statism has led to the establishment of national associations that are formed to promote the interests of state indigenes at ‘home’ and outside their ‘homeland’. These associations mirror the distance between communities that are separated by administrative borders. Statism or the blind belief in the virtues of state creation as the solution to the problems of economic and social advancement by communities has dis-amalgamated Nigeria by creating strong, internalized and irreversible boundaries between regions, peoples and communities.

Conclusion

35There are two types of natural borders in Nigeria. The first is geographical. Two large rivers, Niger and Benue, have divided Nigeria into three natural regions, the North, the East and the West. The second natural border is linguistic. Nigeria is home to three of the six language families in Africa, the Nilo-Saharan family (the Kanuri ethno-linguistic group in the north-east for example), the Afro-Asiatic family (the Hausa group in the north) and the Niger-Congo (the Ibo and Yoruba groups in the south for example). The natural geographical and linguistic territories are not water-tight but are open to stimuli and influence from neighbouring territories. They are therefore accommodative and enable rather than disable inter-group and inter-territorial contact.

36A different conclusion needs to be made concerning the constructed administrative borders. The construction and reconstruction of borders between sub-national units, which has led to an increase in the number of states and local governments, has not only led to the territorial fragmentation of the country but more importantly to the fragmentation of identities. There are as many identities as there are sub-national units of political and administrative action. What has transformed the borders into real boundaries between different identity groups are the notions of rootedness and rootlessness that have become integrated into the workings of these sub-national units. Individuals who can prove ancestral links to each unit are rooted in them and as a consequence have unrestrained access to public services. On the other hand, individuals who cannot make ancestral claims in the unit, irrespective of long decades of residence and of contribution to social and economic development are denied access to output needed to improve their livelihood, because they are qualified as not having roots in the unit, since they are not “sons of the soil.”

37The constructed administrative borders have introduced very situational full citizenship rights. One is a full citizen and therefore in a position to oblige public authorities to satisfy one’s needs and demands depending on whether one resides in one’s state or local government of origin or not. There is a hierarchy of citizenship which is internalized and accepted by all and which makes contest against established borders vain if not unthinkable. “Why don’t you go to your state?” would be the answer given to a life-long non-indigene resident making claims on public authorities in a state other than his/her state of origin for state scholarship provisions for his/her children for example.

38Although the creation of states was supposed to be integrative and amalgamative by giving well constituted ethno-cultural communities a measure of self-rule that would give them a sense of belonging to a global national community, the actual practice of federalism has widened the gap between these communities. Objective, formal, institutional administrative borders have been transformed into subjective and resilient borders that hamper and discourage strong and mutually reinforcing contact between communities. Borders between states and between local government units cannot be transgressed because of the application of an exclusionary principle of citizenship. Elements such as federal character, indigeneity and statism render the porosity and permeability between state (and local government) units very difficult if not impossible because primacy is placed on primordial attachments in determining who gets what, when and how in each state. Which is why for many Nigerians, ‘home’ is one’s state of origin, rather than one’s state of residence. When one closely observes the map of Nigeria, are the lines indicating the borders between the thirty-six States mere geographical demarcations or in reality cracks in the wall of a divided nation-state?