An Assessment of the Restructuring Debate in Nigerian Politics and its Models as a Pathway for Utilitarian Resource Management in Nigeria

Abstract

Restructuring has been the mainstay chorus in Nigerian politics since the emergence of the Fourth Republic in 1999. The volumes of its advocate's chants keep growing louder and louder with the coming of each new federal executive administration. It has become a screeching sound with the emergence of Buhari's federal administration, yet this administration differs in the modality for it with its critics. Also, central to the restructuring fever in the country is the issue of resource control, which can be contexted in the language of political engagement to mean who gets what, when and how. Also, tagging along with the centrality to the resource control theme are the tripod sub-themes of resource allocation, management and utilization structures that translate national assets deployed into prudent public good delivery. Likewise, it's of note that the Nigerian political environment serves as the platform for such transactions, as the trending climate in it determines the utilitarian deployment of resources in the nation. Yet, that climate can be characterized by structural imbalances in our mode of federalism, which results from an uncanny and unsuitable mix of paper federalism, uneven revenue contribution and sharing formula, as well as disproportional control of resources amongst federating units in Nigeria. Such a structure produces an output of underutilized and wasteful expenditure of national resources. Hence, this paper took on the task of assessing the restructuring debate and its mainstay models to sieve a pathway for utilitarian resource management in Nigeria. In doing this, it zoned in on three core areas of the Nigerian structure, extrapolated four models of the restructuring debate championed by political interests, compared our federal structure with those from other polity and recommended a model for consideration. From such activities, the findings showed that the restructuring debate is nuanced with several opinion directions absent of a consciously mapped plan for implementation, yet such does not translate its agenda to irrelevance. Also, it noted that the structural rigidity of the Nigerian federation is abysmal to utilitarian resource management in Nigeria and thus the need for its recalibrated. This paper undertook as it guiding research tools, a qualitative approach staffed with literature review, observation method, comparative and descriptive analysis to arrive at its conclusion.