Nigeria, May 17 -- To begin with, any assessment of the subnational level must acknowledge that Nigeria's federal system is defective and quasi-federalist in nature. Put bluntly, it operates with the ethos of a tightly centralized "Bonapartist state".

This is the truth of the matter: no matter how well a subnational governor performs, the operating framework handicaps him. It's like a boxer fighting with one hand behind his back. In other words, there's a debilitating limit to what a governor can achieve. For instance, governors of states like Benue, Plateau and Zamfara have discovered that the title of Chief Security Officer is more in humour than in reality. To drive meaningful development, subnational governors need full operational c...