If poverty, inflation and weak state capacity are symptoms, Nigeria’s governance design is part of the disease. From an oversized cabinet to duplicated agencies and weak local government structure, here are 10 constitutional and institutional reforms that could help cut waste, free up public funds and make growth more inclusive.
Nigeria’s poverty crisis has exposed more than the pain of fuel subsidy removal and naira devaluation. It has also exposed the cost of the Nigerian state itself. The country still runs a constitutional and administrative structure built for broad patronage, heavy duplication and expensive political accommodation. The result is a federation that spends too much maintaining government and too little delivering public value.
That is the deeper argument behind a serious reform debate: Nigeria cannot sustainably fight poverty while operating one of the costliest governance arrangements in the developing world. The 1999 Constitution, as amended, locks in some of those costs directly, while other burdens survive through institutions and conventions built around it.
So what would a real reform map look like?
1. Remove the constitutional rule that compels one minister from every state
Section 147 of the Constitution requires the President to appoint at least one minister from each state. In practice, that makes a lean federal cabinet almost impossible. President Bola Tinubu’s original cabinet had 45 ministers, and even after reshuffles, the structure has remained large by any efficiency standard.
A constitutional amendment should allow the President to appoint ministers strictly on the basis of functional need. Nigeria does not need a ministerial seat as a constitutional entitlement for every state. It needs a compact cabinet tied to measurable outcomes. A ceiling of roughly 18 to 24 ministers would still leave room for regional balance without hard-wiring excess into the system. This would not solve poverty by itself, but it would send a powerful signal that public office exists for service, not distribution.
2. Shrink the National Assembly or redesign it
Nigeria’s federal legislature has 109 senators and 360 members of the House of Representatives, for a total of 469 lawmakers. That size is constitutionally defined, not accidental. The House size is fixed in Section 49, while the Senate structure flows from the federal design of three senators per state plus one for the FCT.
There are three credible options. One is to reduce the number of seats. Another is to make the legislature largely part-time. The boldest is to move toward a unicameral parliament. Each option would be politically contentious, but the current arrangement is difficult to defend in a country struggling to fund schools, primary healthcare and public transport. A leaner legislature would not undermine democracy; it could strengthen legitimacy if citizens saw more lawmaking and less overhead.
3. Review the 36-state, 774-council structure
Nigeria’s Constitution entrenches 768 local government areas plus six area councils in the FCT, effectively the 774-unit structure that has become politically untouchable. It also entrenches a 36-state federation whose fiscal health is uneven at best.
This is where reform becomes hardest. State creation and local government creation have long been treated as gains to be preserved, not systems to be tested against performance. Yet BudgIT’s recent State of States work keeps underscoring how dependent many states remain on federal transfers and how recurrent pressures crowd out development spending.
A constitutional conference should at least reopen two questions Nigeria keeps avoiding: Are all current subnational units viable, and should local governments remain constitutionally frozen in their current form? Even if merging states proves politically impossible, Nigeria can still redesign local governance into fewer, stronger, more accountable councils.
4. Free local governments from the current distortion
Local government in Nigeria is neither fully autonomous nor fully integrated. It is constitutionally guaranteed, but in practice often trapped between federal allocation politics and state-level control. That leaves the third tier weak where it should be closest to citizens.
A serious reform would do one of two things clearly: either make local government a truly autonomous tier with transparent fiscal rules and direct accountability, or remove it from the Constitution and let states design local administration more flexibly. Nigeria’s current halfway house encourages waste, payroll politics and weak service delivery.
5. Finish the Oronsaye job
The Oronsaye report remains the most famous symbol of Nigeria’s refusal to trim itself. The 2012 review found 541 federal parastatals, commissions and agencies and recommended sweeping mergers, scrapings and relocations. In February 2024, the Federal Executive Council approved implementation again, more than a decade after the report first landed.
That reform should be pursued ruthlessly and institutionalised. Nigeria should adopt a mandatory review cycle under which every federal agency must justify its continued existence every eight or 10 years. If two agencies do similar work, one should go. If a unit has become ceremonial, it should close. Government expansion should never be easier than government cleanup.
6. Cut the number of agencies that regulate the same economy
The problem is not only the number of agencies. It is also overlapping mandates. Businesses in Nigeria often face multiple regulators, multiple levies and too many points of compliance. Even the ongoing tax reform effort was framed partly around reducing the number of taxes from more than 60 to fewer than 10, a sign of how fragmented state extraction has become.
A reform map should therefore include constitutional and statutory clarity on who regulates what. Overlap raises the cost of doing business, encourages rent-seeking and punishes small enterprises first. In Lagos, where thousands of households depend on micro and small businesses, that translates directly into weaker job creation.
7. Move more functions from Abuja to the states
Nigeria calls itself a federation, but too much power remains concentrated at the centre. Policing is the classic example. Roads, rail, electricity and even certain social services have also long suffered from over-centralisation, though recent power-sector reforms have begun to loosen some constraints.
A constitutional review should move more responsibilities to states and tie them to clearer fiscal accountability. This would not only make governance more responsive; it would also reduce the costly fiction that every major problem must be solved from Abuja. Federalism should not mean 36 monthly delegations to FAAC. It should mean 36 engines of problem-solving.
8. End political office as a pension scheme
One of the most corrosive features of Nigeria’s public culture is the idea that elective office entitles a holder to lifelong comfort at public expense. While many of the most controversial ex-governor pension laws sit at state level rather than directly in the federal Constitution, the broader institutional culture is the same: politics is over-rewarded, while frontline service delivery remains underfunded.
A reform map should prohibit publicly funded double-dipping, restrict post-office perks and align political remuneration more closely with economic reality. The moral case is as important as the fiscal one. In a country with mass poverty, governance cannot look like elite insurance.
9. Tie representation to productivity, not symbolism alone
Nigeria’s constitutional design has long tried to manage diversity through spread, balancing and representational symbolism. That instinct is understandable in a divided federation. But the downside is that institutions are often sized for political reassurance rather than public efficiency. The “federal character” principle has value, but it should not become a standing excuse for bloated structures that fail everyone, including the regions they are meant to reassure.
Reform should not abolish balance. It should redefine it. The test should be whether an institution is fair and works, not merely whether everybody has a seat in an overfilled room.
10. Build constitutional brakes against future bloat
Perhaps the biggest lesson is that Nigeria should not only cut waste once; it should make waste harder to recreate. That means embedding fiscal discipline into institutional design. New ministries, agencies or commissions should require sunset clauses, merger reviews or supermajority approval where they materially increase recurrent cost.
This matters because reform in Nigeria often comes in bursts, then stalls. A country with a tax-to-GDP ratio of just 10.8 percent and persistent borrowing pressure cannot afford to treat cost control as an occasional slogan. It has to become part of the governing architecture.
So, can constitutional reform reduce poverty?
Not directly in the way a wage increase, lower food prices or cheaper transport can. But it can create the fiscal room for those things to happen. A state that spends less on self-maintenance can spend more on security, agricultural logistics, public health, schools, power and urban mobility. Those are the channels through which anti-poverty policy becomes real.
That is also the answer to the Tinubu question. Yes, the present hardship was worsened by reform shock after subsidy removal and exchange-rate adjustment. But the deeper crisis predates Tinubu. His presidency inherited, and has partly preserved, an expensive state structure that keeps turning every external shock into a social emergency.
If Nigeria wants lasting relief, it cannot stop at economic reform. It has to reform the machinery of government itself.
