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How state governors are reshaping power in Nigeria

Nigeria operates under a federal system that grants substantial autonomy to its thirty-six state governors, but the balance between Abuja and the state houses has been tilting in ways that have surprised even seasoned constitutional scholars. The 1999 constitution, drawn up after years of military rule, was meant to prevent the concentration of power that had crippled earlier democratic experiments. In practice, the men and women who sit in the state lodges from Sokoto to Calabar have learned to leverage local grievances, control of sub-national police networks, and revenue from the federation account to push the federal government into retreat after retreat.

For an Australian audience that follows Westminster federalism closely, the parallel is not hard to draw. Canberra regularly spars with the states over funding, education policy, and infrastructure, and the High Court in Canberra has had to mediate disputes over everything from industrial relations to pandemic-era border closures. The Nigerian drama is messier, more financially lopsided, and rarely resolved in court, because many of the confrontations take place in the political rather than judicial arena. Still, the dynamic of a central government losing room to manoeuvre while state leaders accumulate new muscle is familiar enough to anyone who has watched the premiers of New South Wales and Queensland trade barbs with federal counterparts.

The story also matters beyond Africa. Australian mining companies, universities, and aid programs have meaningful exposure to Nigeria, and diaspora communities from Lagos and Benin City have made neighbourhoods in Sydney's inner west and Melbourne's western suburbs feel a little closer to home. A weakened federal government in Abuja can change the risk profile for LNG projects in Bonny, affect student visa flows, and reshape where the next generation of Nigerian-Australians will send remittances.

Below, the piece walks through the constitutional design, the fiscal levers governors have learned to pull, the rise of state-backed security outfits, the political machinery that protects them, and what all of this means for ordinary Nigerians who rarely appear in the headlines.

A constitution designed for diffusion

Nigeria's founders, working from the wreckage of the First Republic and decades of military centralisation, tried to spread authority broadly. Power was deliberately divided into an exclusive federal list, a concurrent list, and a residual list belonging to the states. Governors were given four-year terms, control of state legislatures, and the right to appoint commissioners who run ministries as varied as health, agriculture, and local government. The aim was to keep the country together by giving each region a stake in running its own affairs.

The problem is that the constitution was drafted under military supervision and never tested in a sustained period of civilian federalism. Successive amendments have expanded the federal list, particularly over revenue, security, and electoral administration, but the states have compensated by building parallel institutions. A state governor in Lagos or Kano can today dictate terms on land use, urban planning, and informal sector taxation in ways that leave federal agencies on the sidelines.

For Australians who have argued for years about whether the states have too much power, the Nigerian case offers a different lesson. Diffusion can stabilise a diverse federation, but only if the rules are clear and the money is predictable. When the centre adds new responsibilities without matching funds, as Abuja has done with the minimum wage and fuel subsidy compensation, governors become the public face of either delivery or failure. The constitution gives them the room, but politics hands them the megaphone.

Revenue, refineries and the politics of the federation account

Money is where the friction shows. Each month, the Federation Account Allocation Committee doles out funds drawn mainly from oil revenues, customs duties, and company taxes, with states and local governments receiving statutory shares. Governors have grown skilled at negotiating internally generated revenue, with state boards raking in taxes from markets, transport unions, and the booming fintech sector. Lagos, Rivers, and Ogun now collect sums that would have been unimaginable a decade ago, and they are reluctant to let Abuja dictate how the cash is spent.

The recent fuel subsidy reforms, in which the federal government handed responsibility for compensation to state governments, exposed just how deep the tension runs. Governors in the south-west insisted that any subsidy palliative must reflect the population and infrastructure realities of their states, not a flat per-capita formula dictated from Abuja. Northern governors pushed back, citing different fuel consumption patterns and a sense that the reforms favoured states with higher vehicle ownership. The dispute has lingered, with intermittent threats of legal action and quiet bilateral negotiations brokered in hotel rooms that rarely feature in the official record.

For an investor in Perth watching commodity prices, the take-away is that revenue sharing is not a technical accounting exercise in Nigeria. It is the daily battleground on which federalism is being rewritten, one monthly disbursement at a time. The same dynamic surfaces in how governors approach refineries, electricity distribution, and even agricultural input subsidies. Whoever controls the cash controls the credit, and the governors know it.

State policing and the fragmentation of security

Perhaps the most visible shift has been in security. Across the country, governors have built or supported local outfits such as Amotekun in the south-west, Ebubeagu in the south-east, and the Civilian JTF in the north-east. Federal authorities have been forced to either accept these forces, regulate them, or work around them. The Inspector General of Police and the Defence Headquarters have issued mixed signals, leaving room for governors to interpret their own mandates.

A quiet counter-narrative holds that local security formations have done more to deter banditry and rural crime in places like Ondo and Anambra than the much-touted federal operations, which often arrive late and leave early. Critics, however, warn that these forces are poorly trained, occasionally politicised, and prone to the same abuses that have scarred Nigeria's regular police. The International Crisis Group has documented cases where local outfits have been used to settle political scores, and human rights lawyers in Lagos have begun to compile dossiers for possible future prosecutions.

For Australians who have watched the debate over state-based gun laws or the controversial proposal for an Indigenous-led ranger force, the arguments feel oddly familiar. Security is local, but accountability is national, and bridging the two is the hardest job in any federation. The Nigerian version is made harder by the absence of a clear legislative framework, leaving governors free to improvise.

Party machines, godfathers and the race to 2027

The 2027 general election is already casting a long shadow. Sitting governors, with their state patronage networks, determine who gets the party ticket for the presidency. They fund delegates, sponsor national assembly aspirants, and use federal appointments as bargaining chips. In the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party alike, the road to Aso Rock runs through the state lodges, and the president who emerges owes a debt that may take years to repay.

This is where the old political godfathers come in. Many of the men who installed or removed governors in 2015, 2019, and 2023 are still calling the shots from behind the curtain. A governor who defies them risks losing the next ticket; a governor who complies may find themselves quietly sidelined in cabinet formation and policy direction. The two layers of patronage, one inside the state, one in Abuja, often cancel each other out and leave the federal government in a permanent state of negotiation.

There is a subtle but important consequence for ordinary Nigerians. Policies that depend on state cooperation, from the national identity card rollout to the new consumer credit framework, can stall for months while political bargains are struck. The delay is rarely explained, leaving citizens to assume dysfunction where the real story is bargaining. For a reader in Brisbane who has watched a federal grant to a council drag on through three budget cycles, the sensation is recognisable.

What it means on the ground

For most Nigerians, the contest between Abuja and the governors is visible mainly through its consequences. A teacher in Jalingo or a nurse in Enugu feels it when salaries are delayed because of a dispute over a tax refund. A trader in Onitsha feels it when a state governor quietly raises market levies to balance books the federation account will not cover. A Fulani herder crossing from Niger into Kebbi feels it when a federal amnesty programme runs into a state-level grazing restriction.

Diaspora communities feel it too, including the thousands of Nigerian-Australians who send money home through the formal banking sector or through community exchange networks. When a state government tightens its grip on revenue collection, remittance fees can rise and informal channels proliferate. The story of Nigerian federalism is, in the end, a story about whether the rules of the game keep changing faster than families can plan, from Surry Hills barbershops to markets in Dandenong.

There is no easy return to a strong centre. Even if a future president were determined to clip the wings of the governors, the courts, the political parties, and the informal economy have all adapted to a more plural arrangement. The question is whether the resulting balance delivers better public services or simply diffuses accountability. For the people who queue for hours outside a passport office or watch a road project stall in the rains, the answer is more immediate than any constitutional seminar. Readers looking for parallel dynamics across the continent will find context in pieces like the-forgotten-refugees-of-south-sudan-s-civil-war-and-their-struggle-to-return-notes, which trace how displacement and weak central authority reshape politics in neighbouring states. For broader comparison, regional analysis offers useful material on state-society relations across West and Central Africa.

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