NEGOTIATED CONSENSUS AND THE FORMATION OF THE NIGERIAN STATE: SELECTED CASES OF UNPOPULAR CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

From the Legislative Councils and the very first Constitution of 1922 during British Colonial rule to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, a by-product of the military interregnum, Nigeria’s historical constitutional development has been described as chequered and mostly unrepresentative of the wish of the people therefore lacking in popular acceptance and perceived as a foisted legal instrument in view of the poor inclusion of Nigerians in the framing of the constitution upon which the power and authority of government is drawn and from which the government also derives its rights and privileges to govern. The extent to which the Nigerian Constitution lacks legitimacy due to the absence of negotiated consensus by the various sub-nationalities is the focus of this paper. The paper discovers that elitist interest has overridden those of the general populace thus affirming the claim that the Nigerian Constitution is not a product of negotiated consensus.