Political Ontology and the Philosophical Foundations of Nigerian Federalism: An Original Critical Analysis

This dissertation develops an original critical analysis of the political ontology underlying Nigerian federalism, examining the metaphysical assumptions about collective identity, territorial authority, and political community that are embedded in Nigeria's constitutional federal arrangements and arguing that these assumptions are philosophically incoherent in ways that generate predictable governance crises. Political ontology addresses what kinds of entities, collectives, territories, and relations actually exist in political reality, and the philosophical analysis of federalism's ontological foundations has not been undertaken in the Nigerian context, constituting a significant theoretical gap. A four-phase methodology is employed, combining systematic political ontology analysis from Margaret Gilbert, David Miller, and African communitarian political philosophy; critical analysis of Nigeria's constitutional texts, constitutional conference debates, and court decisions from 1960 to 2024 for their embedded ontological assumptions through documentary analysis; qualitative investigation through 85 interviews with constitutional philosophers, political theorists, and federal governance practitioners across all six geopolitical zones; and constructive development of an original philosophical account of federal ontology appropriate to Nigeria's plural social reality. The dissertation proposes the Plural Community Federalism Model as an original theoretical contribution, which grounds Nigerian federal arrangements in a communitarian ontology that recognises ethnic nations, religious communities, and geopolitical zones as genuine collective agents with irreducible political identities requiring institutional accommodation. Original contributions include the model, a critique of the 1999 Constitution's unitary ontological assumptions, and constitutional reform proposals. Keywords: political ontology, Nigerian federalism, constitutional philosophy, communitarian theory, plural identity.