By Ani, Casimir K.c
Federalism has been practiced in Nigeria since 1954. But the country continued to reel from one problem to the other which defy solution. Political instability as demonstrated by several coup detats, religious ,and ethnic crisis, economic doldrums, collective social and cultural anomie, contentious revenue allocation formulas, constitutional crisis of authority, struggle for autonomy and control amongst the federating units of the center, state and the local governments are earmarked as problems emanating from our federal system of government. These problems had been traditional to political philosophy to the extent that the country is yet to strike a balance between our desire to build a nation and the willingness to restructure our federalism. Philosophy exposes the imperfections in what we call the federal system of government, a federalism that refuses and stifles the autonomy of the federating units with the federal government operating a unitary form of legal association which imposes laws, taxes, commands and unconstitutional controls upon the states, local governments and the different sub- nationalities that make up what we call Nigeria. The consequence is that the national question has continued to defy solutions proffered under the existing regime of federalism, which is imperfect and structurally defective. The research examines the Nigerian federal system, and attempts to find out the character of its imperfections, and various contributions of scholars to find remedies and structural conditions under which federalism can work in Nigeria.