Benue State University, Makurdi

Federalism and the Quest for Distributive Justice in Nigeria

Iveren Adoo Uganden

Abstract

This paper argues that agitations for the restructuring of the Nigerian federation constitute a demand for distributive justice within the public space. The unanswered question is whether any consensus exists on the principles of distributive justice and to what extent such principles determine actual distributions in Nigeria. Unlike secessionist threats, agitations for restructuring implicitly contain some concession to the immutability of the federation with an explicit identification of the presence of faults in its architecture. This has fuelled demands for a restructuring that would guarantee and safeguard a fair share in the commonwealth for all the components of the federation. Distributive justice is therefore identified in this discussion as the under-defined and under-invoked quotient in the summation of the Nigerian federation and demands for restructuring and even threats of secession are interpreted as functions of this challenge. Two related areas of distribution namely resource control and revenue allocation are examined against the requirements of three theories of distributive justice. The findings demonstrate a substantial deficit in distributive justice based on the perception of different segments of the Nigerian population.

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