The Preacher of Ecclesiastes said it. A time to unite. A time to listen. A time to reform. A time to renegotiate the terms of belonging. And perhaps, above all, a time to understand that unity without justice is merely geography pretending to be a nation. This is where Pa Obafemi Awolowo, that great legend of our political history, enters this conversation with almost uncanny relevance. In Path to Nigerian Freedom (1947), Awolowo wrote that Nigeria was ‘not a nation’ but ‘a mere geographical expression.’ The statement is often quoted as a political provocation. In its original context, however, it was part of a wider constitutional argument about Nigeria’s deep diversity and the federal structure he considered appropriate to it. That distinction matters. Awolowo was confronting a fundamental political truth: a territory can be created by boundaries; a nation cannot. A map can tell us where Nigeria begins and ends. It cannot tell us why the people within those boundaries should regard one another as members of the same political community. That must be built. And this, ultimately, is the central argument of this second part: The enduring answer to the question of Nigerian unity is not simply to insist that Nigeria must remain one. It is to build a Nigeria that its constituent peoples have sufficient reason to choose. That is the difference between an inherited state and a legitimate union.
The Awolowo Question
Awolowo’s ‘geographical expression’ formulation was, in essence, a nation-building challenge.
If Nigeria was merely a geographical expression, then the historical task was obvious: turn the geography into a political community. But how? Not by pretending that the constituent peoples were identical. Not by demanding that difference disappear. And certainly not by confusing territorial integrity with national integration. Awolowo’s answer in 1947 was federalism. He argued that Nigeria’s diverse national or ethnic groups required sufficient room to develop along their own lines, and that a federal constitution was suited to that diversity. The historical irony is therefore worth pausing over. The man remembered for declaring Nigeria a ‘mere geographical expression’ was not necessarily prescribing its dissolution. He was confronting the constitutional conditions necessary for making its continued existence workable. That is the point contemporary Nigeria should recover. The question is not whether Nigeria exists on the map. It does. The question is whether Nigeria works as a political community.
The Test of a Union
This brings us to the harder question. What is the real test of national unity? Is it the absence of separatist agitation? Is it the survival of colonial boundaries? Is it the ability of the centre to compel compliance? Or is it something deeper; i.e., the willingness of diverse peoples to continue sharing a political home because they believe that home affords them justice, security, dignity and meaningful participation? If the last is the test, then unity cannot be measured merely by the country’s continued territorial existence. A country can remain intact while its citizens feel estranged from it. It can have a constitution without constitutionalism, elections without sufficient trust, federal institutions without meaningful federal autonomy, and national symbols without a sufficiently compelling sense of common ownership. Territorial integrity tells us that a country has remained together. It does not tell us why. And the ‘why’ matters. Because a political union ultimately rests on consent, expressed not necessarily through one dramatic referendum, but through the accumulated everyday experience of citizenship.
The citizen asks: Does this country protect me? Does it treat me fairly? Does my voice count? Does my community have meaningful political agency? Do its institutions belong to all of us, or principally to whoever controls the centre?
Those questions are not necessarily separatist questions. They are nation-building questions.
The Nigerian Paradox
This is where Nigeria’s constitutional dilemma becomes particularly acute. The Nigerian state requires unity. However, unity itself requires legitimacy. The centre requires authority. Yet, excessive concentration of authority can weaken the sense of ownership that makes a federation legitimate. Citizens are asked to believe in one Nigeria. But belief cannot be legislated into existence. It has to be earned. This is why the recurring debate over restructuring, devolution, fiscal federalism and greater subnational autonomy should not be reduced to coded language for disintegration. These are, at their core, arguments about how power should be organised within a plural state. Nor should every constitutional grievance automatically be converted into an argument for separation. The more fundamental question lies beneath both positions: What constitutional arrangement gives Nigeria’s diverse peoples sufficient security and agency to regard the Union as theirs? That question allows disagreement without demanding rupture. It also allows patriotism without requiring silence.
The Unfinished Business of Belonging
For many Ndigbo, the Nigerian experience carries a particularly complicated historical memory; i.e., from colonial rule and the constitutional arrangements inherited at independence, through the violence and devastation of the civil war, to the political, economic and psychological legacies that followed. That history contains competing memories and interpretations. It should therefore neither be romanticised nor reduced to a single narrative. But one reality remains politically significant: the question of belonging has not disappeared. The persistence of separatist sentiment in parts of the Southeast cannot be adequately understood by simply dismissing every expression of it as criminality, emotionalism or youthful radicalism. Equally, every grievance cannot automatically be transformed into a constitutional case for separation. The serious intellectual task is more demanding: identify the grievance, test the evidence, examine the constitutional claim and ask what institutional conditions allow the grievance to endure. That is where political maturity begins. And it is also where the language of self-determination requires greater precision. Self-determination does not necessarily prescribe one constitutional destination. Depending on circumstances, it can be expressed through independence, autonomy, federal restructuring, devolution or continued membership of a Union under renegotiated terms. The common denominator is not separation. It is agency. The right to belong meaningfully includes the right to ask what the terms of belonging are.
The Reciprocal Compact
Every durable political union rests on an implicit bargain.
The state says to the citizen: You are protected here. You are equal here. Your identity does not disqualify you here. Your voice has a constitutional place here. Your future can be built here.
The citizen can then reasonably answer: Then this country is mine.
That is the reciprocal compact. But where citizens repeatedly encounter exclusion, insecurity, unequal treatment or political powerlessness, the emotional and moral foundations of belonging begin to erode. This is why belonging must be reciprocal. The state cannot demand unconditional emotional loyalty while treating citizenship as merely an administrative fact. Nor can citizens claim the benefits of political community while rejecting every obligation that community imposes. Nationhood therefore cannot simply be proclaimed. Nationhood must be experienced. A child born in Enugu, Kano, Ibadan, Maiduguri or Aba should not need a political theory to convince him that Nigeria is his country. His ordinary experience of citizenship should do that work. That is the real test.
From Geography to Nationhood
And so Awolowo’s phrase returns, not as a verdict on Nigeria’s permanent condition, but as a challenge to complete the unfinished work of nation-building. A geographical expression can become a nation. But it does so only when its people acquire reasons, institutions and experiences that transform territorial coexistence into political belonging. This is where the British mirror becomes illuminating. The constitutional tensions within the United Kingdom demonstrate that a union can contain multiple national identities and still confront continuing questions about the terms of membership. The existence of a union does not eliminate those questions. Nor does the expression of self-determination automatically settle what the constitutional future should be. The deeper lesson is this: A union must be strong enough to permit questions about its terms without treating the questions themselves as treason. Nigeria needs that constitutional confidence. It must be possible to discuss federalism without being accused of disloyalty; to discuss restructuring without automatically equating it with disintegration; to discuss self-determination without assuming that its only meaning is secession. Because the opposite approach produces a peculiar political paradox: the more desperately a state insists that its unity is unquestionable, the less opportunity it has to examine the conditions that make that unity sustainable. And that brings us to the central proposition.
The Best Argument for Union
The strongest argument for Nigeria’s continued union cannot ultimately be a slogan. It cannot simply be: Nigeria must remain one. The more searching question is: Why should Nigerians want to remain one? The answer must be visible in the quality of the country itself. In a federalism that has meaning. In citizenship that is genuinely equal. In institutions that command trust. In security that is not geographically selective. In political participation that does not make some communities feel permanently peripheral. In an economy whose opportunities are not perceived as privileges of proximity to the centre. In a constitutional order capable of accommodating difference without turning difference into a threat. That is how geography becomes nationhood. That is how a state becomes a political community. And that is how unity acquires legitimacy. The strongest argument against disintegration, therefore, is not coercion. It is performance. Not fear. Fairness. Not the command to belong. A country worth belonging to. This is the point at which Awolowo’s old formulation acquires new life. If Nigeria began, in his words, as a geographical expression, then the burden of history is not merely to defend the geography. It is to give the geography meaning. To make the Nigerian identity something more than the name printed on a passport. To make citizenship something more than an accident of birth. To make unity something more than the survival of inherited boundaries.
Nigeria must become a chosen political community.
Not necessarily because every Nigerian will agree on every constitutional question. Not because every grievance will disappear. Not because diversity will cease to matter. But because the Nigerian state will have demonstrated, through its institutions and practices, that difference does not have to mean disadvantage and that belonging does not require surrendering identity. That is the deeper meaning of a chosen union. A country can be kept together by force. A nation can only be held together by legitimacy. The first preserves territory. The second creates belonging. And so the question before Nigeria is not simply whether the country will remain one. It is whether one Nigeria can become a Nigeria in which its peoples freely recognise themselves as stakeholders in a common political destiny. That is the unfinished journey from Awolowo’s geographical expression to chosen union. The map gave us Nigeria. The work of justice must give Nigerians a nation.
A union is strongest when its constituent peoples can say: We remain because we are respected. We remain because we are heard. We remain because the rules apply fairly. We remain because our identity is secure. We remain because belonging does not require surrendering our dignity. That is a much more durable foundation for unity than the threat of punishment for contemplating exit. And perhaps this is where Nigeria has the greatest lesson to learn from the British predicament. Do not fear the question of self-determination. Fear the conditions that make self-determination irresistible. A confident federation does not panic when a constituent people asks difficult questions. It listens. A mature federation does not criminalise every demand for autonomy. It negotiates. A wise federation does not confuse dissent with disloyalty. It investigates the grievance beneath the dissent. And a just federation does not ask only, ‘How do we stop them from leaving?’ It asks: ‘What have we done to make them want to leave?’ That is the question Nigeria has avoided for too long. And that avoidance carries a price. In the final reckoning, a nation is not held together by lines drawn on a map. It is held together by lines drawn across the hearts of its citizens; i.e., lines of trust, justice, reciprocity and shared destiny. The British may now be discovering that ‘United’ is not a permanent condition. Nigeria should discover the complementary truth: Unity is not something a government proclaims. It is something a people must continually experience.