FEDERAL CHARACTER LAW AND THE ALLEGORY OF CONTRADICTIONS

Abstract

Behind the deepening divisive ethnic relations spread across Nigeria are criesagainst majority ethnic led government inequities, exclusion and suppression of minorities.The enormous cost of those clashes in terms of lives, properties and revenues losses that theNigerian state continues to bear are enormous. The fine-tuning of the Nigeria 1979Constitution and its modification in 1999 was to warrant the adoption of the power sharingwith the intent of always producing representative bureaucracy and government thatincorporate all ethnic groups. This effort was believed will eliminate inequities, suppressionand imposition that had in the past caused ill will. This paper seeks to answer this question:has the post-1999 Constitutional power-sharing scheme achieved its objective? The objectiveof this paper therefore is to interrogate the practice of the power-sharing scheme to determinewhether it is serving its purpose or if it is an epitome of contradictions. This paper used thedescriptive research method to answer the above stated question in order to realize thispaper’s declared objective. Going through the analysis it is evident that while the FCP lawhave attained some level of ethnic inclusion in some of the MDAs, however, it has fallenshort of establishing a representative bureaucracy and inclusive government the law wasmeant to engender given some of the contradictions discussed in the paper.