Integrationist and accommodationist measures in Nigeria’s constitutional engineering: Successes and failures

Abstract Integration and accommodation have emerged as the two most prominent approaches to constitutional engineering in divided societies. The first seeks a homogeneous public sphere and a differentiated nonpublic domain, drawing its theoretical matrix from conventional liberalism animated by the ideas of John Rawls and Brian Barry. The latter envisages a differentiated public sphere consistent with the identity cleavages in the nonpublic sphere and is driven by theories ranging from liberal multiculturalism to consociationalism. The institutional repertoires of these two approaches function accordingly. Institutions of integration work to create a national community that has a single identity in which its members have uniform rights. On the other hand, institutions of accommodation generate and sustain a political community in which multiple identities coexist and in which rights are allotted to these multiple identities as societies see fit. It is not certain if the institutions of these two competing approaches overlap, are mutually exclusive, or could be blended to achieve desired outcomes. This chapter attempts to clarify these uncertainties through examining constitutional engineering in Nigeria.