By Olu Fasan
The commonest riposte by opponents of the call for political restructuring in Nigeria is that Nigeria’s problem is not its political system or its Constitution but the operators. I refer to this as the “culture versus structure” argument in my forthcoming book In The National Interest.
Put simply, those blaming the operators of the Constitution, and not the Constitution itself, subscribe to the “culture hypothesis”, which attributes a country’s poverty or prosperity to the culture and behaviour of its leaders and citizens, and not the kind of institutions it has. By contrast, adherents of the “structure hypothesis” posit that the nature of institutions, governance structures and political systems determines the success or failure of a nation. The nature/structure dichotomy is central to the restructuring debate in Nigeria.
