Nigeria is not a failed state; it is a state performing exactly as it was designed. That is the uncomfortable, provocative premise that pulses through Formation: The Making of Nigeria From Jihad to Amalgamation (2020). While many view the nation’s current struggles—insecurity, corruption, and systemic friction—as modern malfunctions, co-authors Fola Fagbule and Feyi Fawehinmi suggest they are actually ancient features.
In a high-level discussion featuring Dr. Leena Koni Hoffmann (Chatham House), the dialogue stripped away the romanticism of "nation-building" to reveal the raw, extractive skeleton of the Nigerian project.
The "War-Lord" Economy: From Muskets to Motorcades One of the most jarring sections of Formation involves the comparison between the 19th-century political economy and the contemporary era. To understand the Nigeria of 2026, one must look at the "War-Lord" logic of the 1800s.
-
The Management of Violence In the century between the 1804 Sokoto Jihad and the 1914 Amalgamation, power was not derived from a social contract, but from the ability to manage and trade in violence. The "Big Men" of the 19th century—from the hinterland slave raiders to the palm oil middle-men—consolidated power by creating instability that only they could resolve.
-
The Modern Parallel Today, this "War-Lord" economy has simply swapped muskets for political machinery. We see this in: Security as a Commodity: Just as 19th-century leaders profited from the chaos of slave raids, modern political elites often navigate a "security vote" economy where instability justifies massive, opaque budgetary allocations. The Extraction Mindset: The book argues that the state was formed as a tool for extraction—first for humans (slavery), then for resources (palm oil and tin), and finally for crude oil. The elite competition remains a game of "capture," where the goal is to control the center's distributive power rather than to grow the periphery. 1804, 1914, and the Ghost of #EndSARS The authors make a haunting case: slavery and violence were the primary organizing principles for elite negotiation. When the British arrived, they didn't dismantle these structures; they formalized them. The 1914 Amalgamation was a "marriage of convenience" designed for administrative ease and resource flow, not for the benefit of the "joined."
This historical baggage reached a boiling point in October 2020. The #EndSARS protests were not merely a reaction to a rogue police unit. They were a visceral, digital-age rebellion against a 200-year-old structural reality. For the first time, a rights-conscious, decentralized youth population challenged the "organizing principle of violence" that has governed Nigeria since the Jihadists and the Colonials first traded blows.
"Formation charts a history where the citizen was rarely the priority. #EndSARS was the moment the 'priority' decided to speak back."
The Path Forward: Breaking the Cycle As Dr. Leena Koni Hoffmann noted during the discussion, understanding this trajectory is the only way to pivot toward a functional future. If Nigeria’s state formation was built on fragmentation and elite competition, then "Contemporary Nation Building" requires a total re-imagining of the social contract.
We are no longer living in a colony or a caliphate, yet the echoes of both remain in how we are governed. Formation serves as a mirror—often a brutal one—showing us that until we address the foundational principles of violence and extraction, we will continue to repeat the 19th century in 21st-century clothing.