at the federal, state and local levels. Nevertheless, the implementation of the Federal Character Principle has been flawed and contentious. 50 107. The duality of citizenship based on indigenity at the local level and civic citizenship at the national level has been a major source of conflict in communities throughout Nigeria. In this situation, the rights of an indigene of a state are often recognised to the exclusion of those of others in a state, regardless of how long they have been resident there, and they are often referred to as ‘nonindigenes’ or ‘settlers’. The 1979 constitution directed state and local government agencies to recognise the diversity of people in their jurisdiction in order to foster a sense of belonging and loyalty, but, in contrast, the 1999 constitution is silent in this regard. The 1999 constitution has not managed to resolve this contradiction by defining who an indigene is and describing the rights that are attached to indigeneship. This dichotomy creates unequal access to employment and educational opportunities, especially at the state and local government levels. 108. Nigeria has had a federal framework since independence, yet the debate on a viable and sustainable federalism continues to rage on among many citizens and external experts. The many descriptions used to characterise Nigerian federalism have included ‘failed’, ‘hollow’ or ‘cracked’ federation. But what are the core causes of the failing federal experiment in Nigeria? There is now a widely held consensus that, at the core of problems with Nigeria’s federalism, is the centralised, dysfunctional, ethnodistributive political economy that is based on distortions inherent in the monolithic oil economy. 109. The nature of intergovernmental relations within the Nigerian federation has been dominated by an unproductive and a deliberate subversion of rational relations with the constituent states by the centre. Consequently, over time, a destructive dependency on resources from the centralised state has arisen. This gradual emasculation by the centre of subnational states is itself a consequence of several years of monopolisation of power by a military oligarchy using a monolithic oil-based economy that accounts for 78 per cent of federally collected revenues. 110. The intensity of this distributive strategy has created dependent, constituent states that compete and struggle relentlessly for central resources and distributive largesse. From the perspective of the centre, however, ethnodistribution is a political strategy designed to channel resources to competing communal or ethnoterritorial interests that constantly seek access to Nigeria’s abundant resources controlled by the centre. The pressures arising from a distributive strategy are heightened by the existence of large, centralised resources, thereby creating a struggle for a share in the ‘national cake’ and representations at the centre for more access to federal resources. 111. Distribution struggles in Nigeria are over fiscal allocation, infrastructure location, Cabinet appointments, civil service recruitment and various developmental projects. Over time, the federal government has evolved four main administrative and policy instruments to achieve its distributive strategy in relation to its constituent states: revenue-sharing principles, territorial reorganisation or state creation, the Federal Character Principle,