Constitutions and Nigeria's experience

What you need to know

• A constitution is the body of rules, written or unwritten, by which a state is governed: it establishes the organs of government, allocates powers among them, and sets out the rights and duties of citizens.
• A written constitution is contained in a single formal document, as in Nigeria and the United States. An unwritten constitution is scattered across statutes, judicial decisions, conventions and authoritative works, as in Britain. No constitution is wholly one or the other; Nigeria has conventions, and Britain has statutes.
• A rigid constitution requires a special, difficult procedure for amendment, such as a two-thirds majority plus the approval of a set number of state assemblies. A flexible constitution is amended by the ordinary lawmaking process. Federations need rigid constitutions so that the centre cannot alter the bargain unilaterally.
• Constitutions are also classified as unitary or federal by how they distribute power, and as presidential or parliamentary by how they organise the executive. A single constitution carries several of these labels at once.
• The main sources of a constitution are custom and convention, judicial precedent, statutes passed by the legislature, the writings of constitutional authorities, international treaties, and the work of constituent assemblies and constitutional conferences.
• Features to look for in any constitution: supremacy of the constitution, entrenched fundamental human rights, the procedure for amendment, the structure and powers of the organs of government, citizenship provisions, the status of the judiciary, and the method of selecting leaders.
• The amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates in 1914 by Sir Frederick Lugard created the single territory called Nigeria. It was done mainly for administrative and financial convenience, using the revenue surplus of the South to support the North, and it joined peoples who had never shared one political authority.
• The Clifford Constitution of 1922 introduced the elective principle for the first time in British West Africa, providing for a small number of elected African members of the Legislative Council, with seats for Lagos and Calabar and a restrictive property or income qualification for voters. It covered the South only; the North was governed by proclamation.
• The Richards Constitution of 1946 brought the North into a single legislative framework with the South and introduced regionalism by creating three regions, Northern, Western and Eastern, each with its own regional council. It was criticised for being imposed without consultation of Nigerians and for the fact that regional council members were nominated rather than directly elected.
• The Macpherson Constitution of 1951 was prepared after wide consultation from the village level upwards, which was its great advance. It gave Nigeria a central House of Representatives with a large elected majority and a council of ministers drawn from the regions, but it broke down because regional ministers found themselves unable to act independently of the regional assemblies that sent them.
• The Lyttleton Constitution of 1954 is the one that made Nigeria a federation in the proper sense. It gave the regions clear autonomy with their own premiers, separated the regional and central public services and judiciaries, and set out the division of legislative powers, with Lagos made a federal territory. This is the structure Nigeria carried into independence.
• Constitutional conferences in London and Lagos during the second half of the 1950s settled the remaining questions of self-government and the date of independence, with the Eastern and Western Regions obtaining internal self-government before the Northern Region did.
• Nigeria became independent on 1 October 1960 under an independence constitution that retained the parliamentary system and the British monarch as head of state, represented by a Governor-General. The republican constitution that followed in 1963 removed the monarch and made Nnamdi Azikiwe President as ceremonial head of state, with Abubakar Tafawa Balewa remaining Prime Minister.
• After independence the major constitutions were the 1979 constitution, which introduced the American-style presidential system for the Second Republic, and the 1999 constitution, which launched the Fourth Republic and remains in force as amended. A constitution drafted in 1989 and another prepared in the mid-1990s did not survive to govern a lasting civilian republic.