There is something almost theatrical about the Tinubu administration’s claim to be quietly restructuring Nigeria. It is the politics of tokenism masquerading as transformation: create regional development commissions, rename institutions, inaugurate boards, issue grand speeches about regional integration and then invite a gullible public to applaud what is essentially bureaucratic multiplication without a coherent philosophy of federalism.
President Bola Tinubu appears to have discovered the most convenient Nigerian version of restructuring: create more federal institutions and call it devolution.
The creation and proliferation of regional development commissions is a perfect example. The NDDC and NEDC already provided the template. Rather than interrogate why such interventionist commissions have historically struggled with strategic coordination, project continuity, accountability and measurable development outcomes, the administration has multiplied the model across the country.
But what exactly is the grand regional development philosophy behind this proliferation? Where are the integrated regional economic plans? Where are the regional industrial strategies? Where are the coordinated transportation, agricultural, energy, water, tourism and human-capital frameworks capable of transforming the six geopolitical zones into interconnected economic systems?
Instead, Nigeria appears to be creating another layer of federal bureaucracy.
The danger is that these commissions become little more than procurement extensions of Abuja, institutions through which contracts are awarded, political allies accommodated, boards populated and regional elites periodically appeased. The experience of the NDDC and similar interventionist institutions should have taught us that development does not occur simply because a new commission has been established.
Without strategic direction, measurable outcomes, sustainable financing, rigorous project prioritisation and effective regional coordination, these institutions can easily produce the familiar Nigerian spectacle: hundreds of projects scattered across communities, many abandoned, some duplicated, others politically selected, while the fundamental economic structure of the region remains unchanged.
That is not restructuring. It is bureaucratic expansion disguised as regional development.
WHAT TRUE RESTRUCTURING SHOULD MEAN
Genuine restructuring would have required something much more courageous: the systematic devolution of economic and political power from Abuja to the states and, where appropriate, to regional compacts voluntarily created by states themselves.
States should have greater fiscal autonomy. They should be encouraged to develop regional economic corridors, jointly finance infrastructure, coordinate agricultural value chains, establish industrial clusters, develop tourism circuits, manage transport systems and create investment frameworks tailored to their comparative advantages.
The Federal Government should concentrate on matters that genuinely require national coordination, defence, foreign affairs, monetary policy, national standards, major interstate infrastructure and other constitutionally assigned responsibilities.
That is what serious federalism looks like.
Instead, Tinubu appears to be tightening the fiscal noose around the very sub-national governments that require greater economic autonomy to become viable partners in a federation.
THE ATIKU RESTRUCTURING PLAN CONTRAST: DEVOLUTION, NOT DECORATION
The contrast with Atiku Abubakar’s conception of restructuring could hardly be more fundamental.
Atiku’s restructuring proposal has never been predicated on creating more federal agencies and then christening their activities “quiet restructuring.” Its central premise is that Nigeria’s fundamental problem is structural over-centralisation and that the solution must therefore involve a deliberate redistribution of political authority, fiscal capacity, security responsibilities and developmental functions away from Abuja.
His restructuring thinking, developed in his book on restructuring and elaborated in his 2023 policy programme, can be distilled into several important policy thrusts.
First is decongesting the Federal Government itself. Atiku has consistently advocated reviewing the Exclusive Legislative List and transferring appropriate responsibilities from the centre to the states. The philosophy is straightforward: the Federal Government should do fewer things, but do those things better, while states assume greater responsibility for functions that can be discharged more effectively closer to the people.
That is radically different from creating new federal institutions to intervene in regional affairs.
Atiku asks: Why must Abuja perform functions that the federating units can perform themselves?
Tinubu’s model appears to ask: What new federal institution can Abuja create to perform them?
Second is fiscal federalism and resource control. Atiku has consistently linked restructuring with giving the federating units greater control over the economic resources and instruments necessary to discharge their responsibilities.
The logic is elementary: states cannot be expected to take responsibility for development while remaining financially dependent on monthly federal allocations.
This is where Tinubu’s policy direction becomes particularly contradictory.
The replacement of the Federal Inland Revenue Service with the Nigeria Revenue Service and the consolidation of revenue-administration functions within a stronger national institution should provoke serious constitutional and federalist questions.
The issue is not whether Nigeria needs efficient taxation—it unquestionably does. The question is who should collect what, under whose authority, and for whose economic development?
A genuine federalist tax reform should strengthen the independent revenue capacity of states within their constitutional competence. It should incentivise states to broaden their tax bases, formalise economic activity, improve property taxation, enhance compliance and build productive economies capable of generating sustainable internally generated revenue.
Instead, the direction appears increasingly to be toward a more sophisticated central revenue machine.
That is the fundamental deception: Tinubu is redistributing bureaucracy without redistributing power.
Third is security devolution, particularly state police. Atiku has long advocated state police as an essential component of restructuring because it is illogical to make states responsible for the security and economic wellbeing of their populations while denying them adequate institutional capacity to maintain public order.
Here, Tinubu deserves the limited credit of moving in the direction Atiku had advocated.
But state police is only one component of restructuring; it cannot be converted into evidence that comprehensive restructuring has occurred.
Without integrated intelligence, modern forensic capability, interoperable communications, national databases, coordinated command structures and appropriate federal support, state police could become merely the decentralisation of responsibility without the decentralisation of capacity.
Fourth is turning federating units into genuine centres of economic development. Atiku’s model envisages states and regions developing according to their comparative advantages rather than waiting for Abuja to determine their developmental priorities.
States should be empowered to build economic corridors, industrial clusters, agricultural value chains, tourism economies, infrastructure partnerships and investment strategies suited to their circumstances.
That is fundamentally different from establishing regional development commissions as federal intervention agencies.
One model seeks to build regional economic capacity.
The other risks perpetuating regional dependency on Abuja-managed intervention.
Fifth is constitutional restructuring itself. Atiku’s proposal recognises that Nigeria’s centralisation is not merely an administrative accident. Much of it is embedded in the constitutional distribution of powers and responsibilities.
Consequently, genuine restructuring requires constitutional amendment to alter the architecture of the federation—not merely administrative rearrangement.
You cannot solve a constitutional problem by creating another federal agency.
You cannot solve fiscal federalism by increasing the number of federal revenue administrators.
You cannot solve state autonomy by making governors richer recipients of federal allocations.
And you cannot solve decentralisation by creating a federal ministry to coordinate decentralisation.
There is also a sixth dimension: a smaller, more focused Federal Government. Atiku’s philosophy is that Abuja should concentrate on genuinely national responsibilities while states assume greater responsibility for development.
That means a Federal Government that does less, but does what it does with greater competence and accountability.
Tinubu’s model appears to be moving in the opposite direction: more institutions, more federal intervention, more central revenue coordination and, increasingly, more political leverage over the federating units.
That is the difference between restructuring the federation and rearranging the furniture inside the unitary room.
THE FISCAL NOOSE
The contradiction is particularly glaring because this is not the language of the Tinubu of yesterday.
As a governor and political advocate, Tinubu repeatedly argued that Nigeria had accumulated excessive power and resources at the centre. He spoke about dismantling “feeding bottle federalism” and transferring greater responsibilities and resources to the states.
Yet today, the political theatre surrounding enormous monthly allocations from Abuja to state governors is being presented almost as evidence of economic transformation.
It may massage presidential ego to watch state governors receive increasingly substantial cheques from the centre, but it represents precisely the dependency structure that genuine restructuring was supposed to dismantle.
A state that cannot survive without Abuja’s monthly allocation is not fiscally autonomous. It is a client of the federation.
The celebration of larger allocations may therefore be politically useful, but it is intellectually dishonest to present it as evidence of fiscal federalism.
A genuine federalist reform would ask how to make states economically productive enough to depend less on Abuja. It would not merely celebrate how much more money Abuja is able to distribute to them.
THE CENTRALISING CONTRADICTION
The administration can establish new commissions, new revenue institutions and new administrative structures and still leave the fundamental architecture of Nigerian centralism untouched.
Even the celebrated approval of state police risks becoming another example of responsibility being devolved without sufficient power, resources or architecture.
State police can be useful, but the criminal ecosystem confronting Nigeria today is far beyond conventional local policing. Terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, arms trafficking and organised criminal networks operate on an industrial scale.
No state police command, acting in isolation, can confront such threats without integrated intelligence, modern forensic capability, interoperable communications, national databases, coordinated command and, where constitutionally necessary, federal military support.
Without those structures, state policing could become merely the decentralisation of blame.
More disturbing is the broader pattern of power maximisation.
A federal system cannot function properly when federal security and judicial institutions are perceived as instruments for coercing sub-national governments into compliance with the political preferences of the centre.
The unilateral declaration of a state of emergency in a state, the intervention of federal institutions in state affairs, and the growing perception that governors must demonstrate political loyalty to the President or risk becoming targets of federal pressure are profoundly antithetical to federalism.
A governor is not the President’s provincial prefect.
A state is not a branch office of the Federal Government.
And Nigeria is not supposed to be a unitary state wearing federal clothing.
Tinubu once understood this distinction. The irony is that the man who once condemned excessive concentration of power now presides over an administration increasingly associated with its consolidation.
That is why the administration’s supposed restructuring deserves far more scrutiny than applause.
Regional commissions are not quiet restructuring.
Bigger federal revenue machinery is not quiet restructuring.
Larger monthly allocations are not quiet restructuring.
Political control over governors is certainly not quiet restructuring.
And the multiplication of federal bureaucracies is not the same thing as the devolution of federal power.
The real test is brutally simple:
Is Abuja becoming less powerful while the federating units become more capable, more fiscally independent, more secure and more responsible for their own development?
That is the test Atiku’s restructuring philosophy puts before Nigeria.
And until Tinubu confronts that fundamental question, his “quiet restructuring” project will remain what it increasingly appears to be: a carefully packaged exercise in pretentious tokenism, designed to make centralisation look like federalism while the fiscal and political noose around the states grows tighter.
Alex Ter Adum, PhD
Secretary, D-37 Policy Reform Think Tank
