Constitutionalism, Federal Instability, and the Recurring Crisis of Nigerian Democracy: An Original Historical-Institutionalist Framework

This dissertation provides an original historical-institutionalist analysis of the relationship between constitutional design, federal instability, and democratic recurrence crises in Nigeria from the First Republic to the present, arguing that Nigeria's pattern of democratic breakdown and restoration is best explained by a constitutional architecture that consistently fails to resolve the fundamental collective action problems generated by ethnic plurality and federal resource competition. The dissertation challenges both agency-centred explanations that attribute democratic failure to leadership deficits and structure-centred explanations that treat ethnic diversity as inherently democracy-incompatible, proposing instead the Constitutional Instability Trap Theory, which specifies how particular combinations of constitutional design features produce self-reinforcing instability dynamics. A historical institutionalism methodology combining comparative constitutional analysis, process tracing of four constitutional crises, and primary elite research is employed, drawing on 90 interviews with constitutional scholars, former heads of state, legislators, and civil society constitutional advocates across all geopolitical zones, supplemented by systematic analysis of constitutional conference records, military decree texts, and legislative committee reports from 1960 to 2024. The Constitutional Instability Trap Theory introduces three original constructs: constitutional legitimacy deficit, ethnic veto multiplier, and federal resource conflict amplification, demonstrating how their configuration in each of Nigeria's constitutional experiments produced predictable instability outcomes. Keywords: constitutionalism, Nigerian democracy, federal instability, historical institutionalism, constitutional design.