State Failure, Poor Governance and Restructuring: Interrogating the Triology in the Nigerian State

Abstract

Contemporary Nigerian state is confronted with the clamour for restructuring borne out of perceived, imagined or real crises of marginalization, deprivations, insecurity and the inability of the Nigerian state to provide welfare for her citizenry. This paper attempts a discourse on the relationships among the trilogy of state failure, poor governance and restructuring. It is the
contention of this paper that state failure as a result of poor governance is the major trigger for the agitation for restructuring. The objectives of the paper include to conceptualize and extrapolate the relationships among the trio of state failure, poor governance and restructuring; to question what are we really restructuring; and to establish how good governance in terms of
poor service delivery would stem the tide of agitation for restructuring to the barest minimum. The paper is anchored on the prism of state failure theory. It relied on the data generated from both primary and secondary sources. The paper concludes that at the root of agitation for restructuring is the prevalence of real or perceived crises of marginalization real or imagined,
deprivation, poverty and backwardness. It recommends that good governance, building and strengthening of state governance institutions as the panacea to the agitation for restructuring.