Amalgamation and the Crisis of Governance: The Nigeria Experience

Abstract

This paper deals with the discourse on evolution of Nigerian state and the challenges it poses for actualisation of democratic governance in the polity. The continued crises in the polity and corrupt practices that characterizes Nigerian state overtime reveals a diminishing state of accountability and ethical values which has its foundation in emergence of the Nigerian state. Since the purpose of amalgamation was to protect the British economic interest and to facilitate exploitation of the nation’s resources, the Nigerian politician who took over power from the British continued from where they stopped, thereby making the state an instrument to perpetuate corrupt practices of all sorts. The implication of this is the disappearance of democratic values, political decadence and retarded development. Methodologically, the paper adopted a qualitative research technique of data collection through the content analysis of empirical studies conducted by scholars who have made outstanding contributions on the practice of governance within and outside Nigerian political landscape. Against this analytical background, the study analyses the issue of governance vis-a-vis avoidable crises foisted on the polity by the politicians since the commencement of the independence in 1960 and finds out that, the present governance crises in Nigeria had its root in colonialism. The study therefore calls for a resolution among the federating units which must entail a renegotiation of the polity along democratic principles and a total reform of the anti-corruption agencies for effective performance.