The real conversation is not whether Nigeria should restructure, amend its constitution, create state police, reform taxation, or remove subsidies. The more fundamental question is whether the organisation called Nigeria has achieved an effective balance between authority, incentives, and capability across its constituent parts. The misalignment of these mechanisms gives rise to the symptoms that has taken the centre stage of debate.
In 1960, the agglomeration of predominantly three nations was recognised as an independent country. This became known as Nigeria. At the outset, all seemed to be working reasonably well. Power was distributed among its constituent units, and the determination to develop rested heavily on the regions. However, changes in the country’s economic and political design, which increasingly placed politics at the centre of national life, was to gradually alter its trajectory.
Since then, generations of Nigerians have debated what Nigeria is, what it ought to have become in comparison with countries that shared similar historical trajectories, and why it has struggled to fulfil its enormous promise. These debates have often revolved around politics, ethnicity, religion, resource allocation, constitutional arrangements, and leadership. Yet, perhaps the more fundamental question has received far less attention: What exactly is Nigeria?
The conventional answer is straightforward. Nigeria is a sovereign state. It possesses a defined territory, a recognised government, a national flag, an anthem, a currency, armed forces, and membership in international institutions. By every legal and diplomatic definition, Nigeria is a country.
Yet countries do not develop. Organisations do.
Development is not the product of geography, population size, natural resource endowments, or constitutional declarations, as frequently bandied about by Nigerian leaders. It is the consequence of how human beings organise themselves to pursue collective objectives. Every successful society, whether described as a state, nation, kingdom, republic, or federation, is ultimately an organisation of people, institutions, resources, incentives, and ideas directed towards a common purpose.
Viewed through this lens, Nigeria may be better understood not simply as a country but as an organisation.
Like every organisation, Nigeria has a governing board, executive leadership, operational units, stakeholders, performance targets, resource allocation systems, internal conflicts, and competing interests. It has formal rules and informal norms. It possesses immense assets and significant liabilities. It develops plans, implements policies, raises revenue, manages personnel, and delivers services. It seeks legitimacy from its shareholders — the citizens — and recognition from external partners.
The challenge, however, is that while many organisations are deliberately designed around a shared mission, the organisation called Nigeria has spent much of its existence struggling to define, internalise, and align around a common purpose.
This reality perhaps explains why a country endowed with one of the largest domestic markets in the world, abundant natural resources, entrepreneurial citizens, and immense strategic importance continues to find development elusive. The issue may not simply be leadership failure, resource constraints, or policy inconsistency. It may be that the organisation itself remains insufficiently integrated around a common developmental project.
This is not merely a theoretical proposition. Recent developments in the United Kingdom provide a useful illustration. Following the loss of political confidence, leaders often come under immense pressure to resign or step aside. Such outcomes are frequently attributed to personal honour or democratic maturity.
Yet they are, more fundamentally, products of organisational culture.
Organisations shape behaviour. They establish expectations for accountability and reward responsiveness, and impose consequences for perceived failure. Over time, these expectations become internalised not only by leaders but also by citizens and institutions.
At independence, Nigeria operated a system in which the regions possessed considerable authority over their economic destinies. The federal government performed important coordinating functions, but the regions enjoyed sufficient autonomy to develop according to their comparative strengths and ambitions. The agricultural revolutions of the North and West, the industrial and commercial expansion of the East, and the healthy competition that emerged among them were products of a system in which authority and responsibility were largely aligned.
The same principle applies in Nigeria. If political leaders often appear insulated from public dissatisfaction, it may be less a reflection of individual character than of the organisational environment within which politics operates. Where accountability mechanisms are weak, incentives are misaligned, and consequences for poor performance are uncertain, responsiveness inevitably suffers.
In this sense, leaders are not entirely separate from the organisations they lead. They are products of them.
Going back to what has held back development, the question is definitely not whether Nigeria possesses potential. The evidence of potential is overwhelmingly visible. A more important question is whether the organisation called Nigeria is structured, governed, and incentivised in a manner capable of transforming that potential into sustained national development.
For starters, let us explore the country’s multilevel governance structure and how it has evolved over time, with far-reaching implications for the relationships among authority, incentives, and capabilities across the various tiers of government.
At independence, Nigeria operated a system in which the regions possessed considerable authority over their economic destinies. The federal government performed important coordinating functions, but the regions enjoyed sufficient autonomy to develop according to their comparative strengths and ambitions. The agricultural revolutions of the North and West, the industrial and commercial expansion of the East, and the healthy competition that emerged among them were products of a system in which authority and responsibility were largely aligned.
Over time, however, this relationship changed. Military centralisation, followed by successive constitutional arrangements, gradually concentrated authority and resources at the federal level, while simultaneously multiplying the number of subnational administrative units. Today, Nigeria operates one of the most extensive systems of multilevel governance in the world, comprising a federal government, 36 states, the Federal Capital Territory, and 774 local governments.
On paper, this appears to represent a highly decentralised governance structure, reflective of both the country’s diversity and the desire to bring government closer to the people. In practice, however, it often functions as a highly centralised organisation with multiple administrative branches, lacking proportional authority and sufficient incentive for alignment.
This distinction is important.
In every successful organisation, authority, incentives, and capability reinforce one another. Units entrusted with responsibilities are provided with the resources, powers, and incentives necessary to fulfil them. Performance can then be measured against outcomes. In Nigeria, however, authority, incentives, and capability frequently reside in different places.
The federal government possesses significant fiscal authority but limited direct control over local economic realities. State governments are expected to drive development within their territories, but often operate within constrained fiscal and policy spaces. Local governments, which should represent the frontline of governance and service delivery, remain among the weakest components of the organisational structure.
The result is an organisation in which responsibilities are dispersed, incentives are frequently misaligned, and accountability becomes difficult to establish.
The future of Nigeria may depend less on finding the next great leader and more on ensuring that authority, incentives, and capability become mutually reinforcing across all levels of governance. The task before the country, and indeed the next government, may therefore be less about constitutional engineering and more about creating the conditions under which every tier of government has both the authority and the incentive to pursue development with purpose.
The implications extend far beyond governance. They affect economic development itself.
Development occurs where decisions are made, investments are coordinated, capabilities are built, and actors are held accountable for outcomes. Where authority is disconnected from responsibility, local initiative weakens. Where incentives are detached from performance, innovation declines. Where capability is assumed rather than deliberately cultivated, implementation suffers.
Perhaps this explains why many states continue to look towards Abuja for solutions to problems that are fundamentally local in nature. It also explains why national development plans often struggle to achieve their intended outcomes. The outcomes of any organisation are ultimately shaped by how its internal structures are designed and how effectively they function.
This perhaps explains why discussions about Nigeria’s development challenges often revolve around leadership. Leadership matters, but organisations do not succeed merely because of exceptional leaders. They succeed when their structures consistently align authority, incentives, and capability towards shared objectives.
The organisation called Nigeria has spent decades debating the quality of who should lead it, and every four years invests heavily in that choice, often with lingering doubts about whether the right decisions are being made. Perhaps the more pressing question is whether the organisation itself is designed to produce the outcomes its citizens expect from it.
And yet, as another election cycle approaches, familiar conversations once again dominate the national discourse. Constitutional restructuring and/or review, state policing, fiscal federalism, taxation, subsidies, insecurity, and economic reforms have returned to the centre of political debate. Political parties and aspiring officeholders are positioning themselves around these issues in pursuit of electoral advantage.
These are important conversations. However, they may not be the most important conversation.
The real conversation is not whether Nigeria should restructure, amend its constitution, create state police, reform taxation, or remove subsidies. The more fundamental question is whether the organisation called Nigeria has achieved an effective balance between authority, incentives, and capability across its constituent parts. The misalignment of these mechanisms gives rise to the symptoms that has taken the centre stage of debate.
No organisation can function effectively when authority resides in one place, responsibility in another, and accountability nowhere in particular. No organisation can sustain performance when those expected to deliver outcomes lack the incentives to do so. Equally, no organisation can achieve its objectives when capability is assumed rather than deliberately built.
The future of Nigeria may depend less on finding the next great leader and more on ensuring that authority, incentives, and capability become mutually reinforcing across all levels of governance. The task before the country, and indeed the next government, may therefore be less about constitutional engineering and more about creating the conditions under which every tier of government has both the authority and the incentive to pursue development with purpose.
That, perhaps, is the conversation Nigerians should be having.
Dipo Baruwa is a business climate development analyst.
