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Federalism And National Intergration In Nigeria: Issues And Challenges
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Duuelger defines national integration as
building up solidarity and breaking down antagonism among the people in a
political system. It refers specifically to the creation of a sense of
territorial rationality which overshadows parochial loyalties.
Chime
sees national integration as a process of cohesion between two or more
social units whereby those units come together to constitute a political
whole, which can in some cases be described as community.
Ali
Mazrui in his book cultural Engineering and nation building in East
Africa 1902, sees national integration as the process of merging sub
going entities into a shared sense of national consciousness.
In the
same vein De Uree also defines integration as the combination and
autonomous social and political problems arising among its members, for
controlling their behaviour and the processes occurring among them, for
keeping peace among them and or mobilizing their power or resources for
making collection decision and as a result of all things, acting as a
new unit with respect to its social or physical environment. Prior to
these definitions, integration will be conceived as the process of
increasing a social or political system capacity based on decision
making process.
National integration is relation to national
development. It usually constitutes a platform for national development.
Development can only be achieved in an atmosphere of cooperation and
unity.
Where everybody feel a sense of belonging and wants to contribute his own quota to the development of national goal.
According
to O. Aboyade in his book, issues in the development of tropical Africa
(1976:16), he observed that development is essentially a continuous
process of generating and more efficiently allocating resources for
achieving greater social satisfying ends. While political development
relates to the overall capacity of a people to govern them efficiently,
this ability to govern relates to the capacity to extract resources,
make and regulate behaviours. It also means the ability to resolve
societal problems and manage conflicts.
If the society is able to do all these things mentioned, it will certainly lead to economic development for that nation.
Conclusively,
after going through the available literatures on federalism and
national integration, it was observed that some of them were able to
explain to an extent the feasibility of achieving national integration.
However in this study, we shall attempt to explore the suitability and
adaptability of federalism to the excruciating task of building a
coherent nation out of desperate and antagonistic people in Nigeria.
1.5 Theoretical Frameworks
Theoretical
framework is indeed very useful in a research work in the sense that it
enhances its internal activity. With this in mind, there are lot of
theories used in the field of political science for research analysis;
however, we will adopt the system theory by David Easton.
This
theory is seen by scholars among who is Ifesinachi as a set of related
elements and interrelations among them, which are disintegrated from
those elements not in the system by ambiguous analytic boundaries. The
theory explains the component of the system made up of groups, persons
or areas where the frequency of a particular pattern of interaction
falls to an observable degree. Interdependence is the uniting force in
the system; this is because stability and subsequently growth can only
be achieved when all the components of a system work together.
As a
way of using the system theory by David Easton to analyse this work,
Easton, [2002], defines a political system as that system of interacting
in any society through which binding or authoritative allocations are
made and implemented.’[Easton in Okere 2002:98] this implies that an
organization interacting with an environment, influencing it and being
influenced by it and there also many interacting internal parts which
constitutes parts of the arranging that the society employs in
formulating and pursuing its collective goods [Almond and Powell
1980:4].
The three vital components of Easton definitions of political system constitute authoritative allocation, values and society.
At
this point, it becomes necessary to make a brief application of this
theory to the Nigerian political scene, before and after independence.
The theory would be employed in this study because in Nigeria, like any
other third world federative system, the power to allocate the resources
available in the country is essentially concentrated at the central
government, [federal level] that is the hierarchy of authority [federal
level, state and local government], with the central government sitting
on top of other levels in the allocation of revenues. This is basically
due to the prolonged military rule in the country, and this has been one
of the banes. For the country to experience genuine unity and
subsequently development, all the groups and cleavages have to come
together since no part of the system can function effectively and
maximally without depending on the other components.
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]The problem of federalism and the associated crises of national integration in Nigeria raise serious alarm. The situation attracts growing interest and concern. The crises are very severing such that they culminate in a strong force being mounted on the federation with tendency to disintegrate the country. The works addresses this phenomenon by investigating and analysing the problem. Documentary research method is used in gathering and analysing data. So textbooks, journals, periodical publicat ... Continue reading---
