“Very little was known by most of us about the theory of federalism at the time. Wheare’s book on Federal Government was the of most of the politicians. They were always quoting Wheare at every constitutional conference. It may well be that if we knew more about the theory at the time, we would have emerged in our effort to provide our people with a federal constitution that took account all the peculiar circumstances of our country and our people. When things began to fall apart, those of us in the know quickly realized that ours was the tragedy of assumptions. We assumed everybody, both federal and regional governments, the opposition, the electorate, the courts, the civil servants, the generality of the people and even the boy academician would play the game according to the generally accepted rules”
Chairman’s remarks at the end of session of Nigeria Institute of International Affairs’ International Conference on Federalism and reproduced in Akinyemi, Cole and Ofonagoro (eds) (1979) Readings on Federalism, Lagos: NIIA
