By Uche Anichukwu
Former Deputy President of the Nigerian Senate and Speaker of ECOWAS Parliament, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, nailed the Nigerian situation in three words that have stuck in the Nigerian political lexicon: feeding bottle federalism.
Delivering the 2012 edition of Oputa Lecture on Governance in Africa at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, entitled “Nigerian Federalism: A Case for a Review”, Ekweremadu forewarned that Judgement Day would ultimately come upon the nation unless it did away with ”the military-imposed ‘feeding bottle federalism’ to enthrone one predicated on self-reliance, hard work, enterprise, and resourcefulness to catalyse development”.
According to Ronald Watts (1929-2015), who spent over 40 years of his life on comparative study of federalisms, federalism provides a technique of constitutional organisation (framework) that permits action by a shared government for certain common purposes in a larger political unit,…
Source: Vanguard Newspaper
