BREXIT, RESTRUCTURING AND NIGERIA’S FUTURE

 Nigeria’s restructuring debate carries a similar risk as Brexit, contends K BOLANLE ATI-JOHN

Almost everyone in Nigeria now agrees on one thing: the present constitutional arrangement is failing. Almost no one agrees on what should replace it.

The word “restructuring” has become broad enough to accommodate state police advocates, resource control campaigners, regionalists, fiscal federalists, local government reformers, constitutional gradualists and those who simply want Abuja’s power reduced. That breadth is not proof of consensus. It is proof that the country has not yet done the hard work of turning grievance into design.

The grievances are real. The centre carries too many responsibilities and discharges too many of them badly. Many states are fiscally weak, institutionally uneven and politically dependent. Communities face insecurity while waiting for distant authority to act. Citizens feel alienated from power. Productive regions resent a system that rewards allocation more than enterprise. Nigeria cannot pretend the present arrangement is working.

But the fact that a system is failing does not mean that any replacement will succeed. A country can escape one disorder only to enter another if it confuses a slogan with a governing plan.

That is why Brexit is useful to Nigeria, not as a direct comparison, but as a warning. Brexit was Britain’s withdrawal from a supranational union. Nigerian restructuring would be the redesign of an internal federation. One concerned Britain’s relationship with Europe; the other concerns Nigeria’s internal distribution of power, revenue, security, identity, responsibility and sovereignty. The categories are different. But the warning is similar: emotionally powerful constitutional change can become a national trap when the slogan is clearer than the machinery of implementation.

“Take back control” was a brilliant political phrase. It was simple, memorable and emotionally satisfying. But after the vote came the harder questions: borders, trade, labour, customs, regulation, markets, Northern Ireland, diplomacy, supply chains and economic adjustment. The campaign secured a mandate before the state had settled the operating model.

That is the first Brexit lesson for Nigeria: mandate before machinery is dangerous. The second is that incompatible promises eventually collide. Brexit was sold to different audiences as sovereignty without serious cost, market access without full obligations, border control without severe disruption, and national renewal without painful trade offs. Nigeria’s restructuring debate carries a similar risk. Some want state police and stronger local authority. Others want resource control and national equalisation. Some want regionalism, while others fear ethnic majoritarianism. Some want stronger states, while citizens fear governors who already dominate local governments. These desires may not all be wrong, but they cannot all be reconciled by rhetoric.

The third Brexit lesson is that unattended fault lines become governing crises. For Britain, Northern Ireland exposed the complexity of sovereignty, borders, identity and economic integration. For Nigeria, the equivalent danger lies in minorities inside newly empowered states or regions, captured local governments, resource bearing communities, interstate migration, grazing routes, water rights, internal trade and the abuse of subnational security forces. Serious countries identify these pressure points before they explode.

This is not an argument against restructuring. On the contrary, the present arrangement is producing too much dysfunction to be defended by serious people. A federation in which the centre is overburdened, states are overdependent, and citizens are too far removed from accountable authority cannot produce the renewal Nigeria requires. The case for change is real. The danger is unserious change.

Nigeria’s restructuring debate often behaves as if the removal of power from Abuja will automatically empower the citizen. That assumption is false. Power does not disappear when it leaves the centre. It relocates. If badly designed, it may move from Abuja to governors, local oligarchs, ethnic majorities, armed networks, revenue cartels and political godfathers. A weak centre can be dangerous, but strong local tyranny is not liberation.

This is why the restructuring question must be asked with brutal honesty: restructuring for whom? For citizens, or for local elites? For accountability, or for new zones of capture? For productivity, or for revenue sharing by another name? For national renewal, or for the multiplication of dysfunction into thirty six smaller centres of disorder? Those who ask these questions are not enemies of reform; they are its guardians against national self injury. Taking them seriously is what serious preparation requires.

By a restructuring doctrine, I do not mean another committee designed to bury reform. Nigeria has had enough conferences, panels, reports and white papers that produced impressive language but little implementation. By doctrine, I mean a public, phased, costed and legally codified transition plan that answers the hard design questions before implementation begins.

Nigeria has already done a version of this. The 2025 tax reforms, legislated after months of open contestation among the states and geopolitical zones, rebalanced value added tax in favour of the federating units, lifting the states’ collective share while retaining the equality component that cushions the weaker ones. The shift took effect in January 2026, and in its first month the states drew tens of billions of naira more than the old formula would have yielded. It was a redistribution of revenue achieved through a costed, negotiated and legally codified process rather than a slogan, and it held because it was designed. That is the method. What remains is to apply it to the harder questions still unanswered.

Who controls revenue? If derivation is pushed further, as some still demand, and Lagos keeps still more value added tax, what equalisation mechanism protects the weaker states? If oil producing states retain more resource revenue, what happens to host communities, offshore resources, derivation, environmental remediation and national obligations? If states gain greater control over solid minerals, who prevents illegal mining from becoming a deeper security economy? If states establish police forces, who prevents governors from turning them into private armies?

What happens to the Federal Character principle, the constitutional practice designed to reassure Nigeria’s diverse communities that they have a place in federal institutions? Does it remain, evolve or disappear? What becomes of local government? Nigeria’s local government system is already a constitutional fiction: recognised in law, weakened in practice, and treated by many governors as a revenue annex. Any restructuring that devolves power to states without guaranteeing democratic and fiscal autonomy at the local level will not bring power closer to the people. It will merely create new gatekeepers.

These questions are not excuses for delay. They are the minimum questions of statecraft.

To this, there is a legitimate objection. Nigeria is not a seminar. Insecurity is killing citizens. Fiscal exhaustion is real. Millions feel alienated from the state. Must the country wait for perfect preparation while it burns?

The honest answer is no. Urgency is real and delay carries its own dangers. But urgency is not a licence for confusion. A rushed restructuring that collapses state finances, deepens ethnic suspicion, creates abusive security forces or triggers resource conflicts will not rescue Nigeria. It will accelerate the very disintegration restructuring is meant to prevent.

That does not mean doing nothing. There are reforms that can begin immediately while the deeper constitutional architecture is being built. States demanding greater autonomy should publish their revenues, obligations, debt exposure, wage bills, internally generated revenue, security spending and development capacity. Citizens must know whether their states are ready for greater responsibility or merely louder rhetoric. Local government autonomy must be treated as a democratic and developmental priority, not as a bargaining chip between Abuja and state capitals.

Regional economic cooperation can also advance within the current constitution. The Tinubu administration’s expansion and consolidation of Regional Development Commissions across the six geopolitical zones is an important institutional development in this regard. It gives Nigeria a practical platform for regional development without immediately reopening the entire constitutional architecture. But the point must be clear: Regional Development Commissions are not restructuring. They are instruments of regional development within the existing federal order. If properly governed, they can support coordinated infrastructure, agriculture, transport, power, industrial corridors, security intelligence, education standards and investment promotion. If poorly governed, they will become another layer of patronage, duplication and contract politics.

Mining governance and security architecture also require immediate attention. Solid minerals are already linked to insecurity, illegal extraction, foreign exploitation and local violence. Any future restructuring that gives states greater control over mineral resources must first confront the security economy around extraction. State police may be necessary, but it cannot be introduced as a slogan. There must be recruitment standards, command safeguards, federal oversight, judicial remedies, human rights protections, inter state coordination and mechanisms to prevent partisan abuse. A police force controlled by a reckless governor can become as dangerous as a distant federal force that arrives too late.

The larger point is this: Nigeria does not need paralysis. It needs sequencing.

A serious restructuring process would begin by classifying the proposals on the table. Fiscal federalism is not regionalism. State police is not confederation. Resource control is not local government autonomy. Devolution of powers is not the dismantling of the federation. Each model carries different risks, costs and institutional requirements. To use one word, restructuring, for all of them may be convenient, but it is not serious planning.

Nigeria therefore needs a national restructuring doctrine built around five tests.

The first is constitutional clarity: what exactly is being changed, and by what legal process?

The second is fiscal realism: which units of government can fund the responsibilities they seek?

The third is institutional capacity: which states or regions have the administrative competence to absorb new powers?

The fourth is citizen protection: how will minorities, migrants, political opponents and vulnerable communities be protected under stronger subnational governments?

The fifth is national cohesion: what powers must remain at the centre to preserve defence, foreign policy, monetary stability, national citizenship, inter state commerce and constitutional order?

Who should produce such a doctrine? Not a closed committee designed by Abuja for Abuja’s convenience. Nigeria needs a nationally representative commission drawn from the federal government, state governments, the National Assembly, the judiciary, security agencies, organised labour, the private sector, traditional institutions, civil society and the six geopolitical zones, with a clear mandate, a fixed timeline and a public reporting obligation. Its work must be transparent. Its draft must be debated. Its final recommendations must be clear enough to be adopted, amended or rejected by the people’s representatives.

A properly designed restructuring could renew Nigeria. It could bring government closer to the people, unlock regional productivity, force states to become serious economic actors, reduce dependence on Abuja, encourage innovation and move the country from allocation politics to production politics.

But a badly designed restructuring could do the opposite. It could deepen inequality between richer and poorer states. It could empower local strongmen. It could intensify resource conflicts. It could weaken national solidarity. It could create new minorities within empowered regions. It could leave the centre too weak to hold the country together, while the states remain too weak to govern effectively.

This is why the debate must move from passion to architecture.

Nigeria’s problem is not that its people lack slogans. We have had many: true federalism, resource control, state police, power shift, diversification, national unity, restructuring. Some contain truth. Some express legitimate grievance. Some point to urgent national needs. But slogans are not operating systems. They do not draft laws, fund institutions, train police officers, settle tax disputes, protect minorities, build courts, manage debt or prevent governors from abusing power.

Brexit should be studied in Nigeria not as a British embarrassment, but as a democratic caution. A people may vote for change and still suffer if the machinery of change is poorly designed. A political class may win a mandate and still fail to govern the consequences. A nation may reclaim authority in theory and discover, too late, that authority without capacity is only another form of exposure.

Nigeria should not fear restructuring. It should fear restructuring without architecture.

A nation may survive a bad policy. It may recover from a bad election. It may correct a failed programme. But when a country redesigns itself without preparation, the consequences can outlive the politicians who made the promise.

The work of building a restructuring doctrine, phased, costed, legally clear and institutionally prepared, is not an obstacle to change. It is the only change worth having. But it must not be an open ended process. Six months is not a deadline to restructure Nigeria; it is a deadline to produce the doctrine. A focused, well staffed commission should be able to deliver a legally draftable framework, a fiscal recalibration plan, a security transition architecture, and a five-year implementation roadmap with measurable milestones. If Nigeria cannot produce such a plan in six months, it does not have the seriousness to restructure at all. The time to begin is not after the slogan has won. It is now.

Rear Admiral Ati-John (Rtd) psc(+) fdc(+) is a Distinguished Fellow of the National Defence College, Abuja, and writes from Lagos.