Key Stone to Achieving Chapter 2 of the Nigerian Constitution

By Olusegun R. Babalola (A member of Afenifere and SDP)

Section 21 of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution (as amended), within Chapter II – “Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy,” encapsulates a profound tension at the heart of Nigeria’s political and economic development. Prince Adewole Adebayo has brought discuss on this Chapter II to the front burner since he made Achieving Chapter II the cornerstone of his acceptance speech as Social Democratic Party (SDP) presidential candidate in Bauchi on May 9 2026.

Section 21 provides that: “The State shall – (a) protect, preserve and promote the Nigerian cultures which enhance human dignity and are consistent with the fundamental objectives as provided in this Chapter;” and “(b) encourage development of technological and scientific studies which enhance cultural values.” On its face, this is a noble commitment to cultural preservation, yet a critical misreading of the term “culture” has rendered Section 21 geopolitically and economically impotent, leaving Nigeria unable to emulate the defining strategy of the world’s most successful economies: the deliberate coupling of ancient constitutionalism (steeped into a particular civilizational idea of virtue) with modern constitutionalism (towards national security and the most compatible self-reliant political—economy) what I have elsewhere called the Janus Effects. Our failure is most starkly exposed in the age of civilizationalism.

The “Rise of the Rest,” a phrase popularized by Fareed Zakaria, describes the great power shift of the modern era, where countries across the globe have experienced rates of economic growth once unthinkable. This is not merely a story of adopting free markets. Closer examination reveals that these rising powers have, as a matter of fundamental strategy, emulated the West’s own historical secret: the coupling of its civilizationalism with capitalism to generate the Janus Effects. This coupling is a Janus-faced constitutionalism that looks simultaneously backward to the moral legitimacy of an ancient past and forward to the efficiency of modern state and market institutions. Much of this is expressed in my 2007 book Policy of Self-Reliance, which focused only on United States and China. The evidence is compelling.

China’s “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” (coined by Deng Xiaoping) is not a rejection of the past but a modern synthesis. It draws deeply on the Confucian tradition of “incorporating ritual into law,” a paradigmatic model of social governance that fuses moral sentiment, reason, and legal order. This ancient constitutionalism, revived as “virtue-law co-governance,” provides the civilizational bedrock for a modern, market-oriented authoritarian state, delivering the world’s most dramatic economic transformation. India, from where we got the Chapter II, constitutionally entrenched its ancient Panchayati Raj system of village self-governance through the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments. This was not a rejection of modernity for tradition’s sake but a strategic move to decentralize democratic accountability, linking the legitimacy of India’s civilizational past directly to the administrative machinery of the modern developmental state. South Korea, Japan, and Singapore have similarly navigated their paths.

Fundamentally, Janus Effects couple ancient constitutionalism (especially in local governance) with various forms of modern constitutionalism, characterized by a fusion of deeply held civilizational ethics with aggressive, state-guided capitalist enterprise, creating unique Janus-faced models of governance. This creates polities that are legitimate, accountable in culturally resonant ways, and supremely capable of mobilizing human and economic capital. The meteoric rise of these nations is the rise of what scholars now term civilizational states, where regimes present the nation not merely as a political community but as the inheritor and protector of an ancient civilization, thereby legitimizing an alternative pathway to modernity.

This turn to civilizationalism in global politics is a counter-hegemonic reaction to the globalization of a singular Wester liberal international order. It is an assertion that distinct civilizational identities will be the central subjects of international politics and economic competition. In this new global arena, a state’s most powerful asset is not just its GDP but the depth and vitality of its civilizational brand—a brand built on a lived, constitutionalized tradition, not a curated museum exhibit. For Nigeria, a country rich in ancient constitutional traditions, this should be a profound geopolitical opportunity. Instead, it has become an insurmountable obstacle due to a fundamental misunderstanding of what “culture” truly means.

The problem in Nigeria is the pervasive misunderstanding of the term “culture.” Within the dominant modernization paradigm, culture is transmogrified and exteriorized. A lived, dynamic political tradition that should be the engine for economic development is stripped of its constitutional force and reduced to mere spectacle. It becomes dances, exhibitions, artifacts, and a “museum culture” entirely outside the realm of actual constitutional and economic reality. Not only is this misunderstanding evident in Olusegun Obasanjo’s opening speech at the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) in January 15, 1977, it also mirrored in the 1979/1999 Constitutions.

Despite the powerful de-colonial and Pan-African sentiments of Obasanjo’s speech which finds expression in the Chapter 21, his framing was revealing. He described culture as “the totality of the way of life of any group of people,” adding that “Our past is what makes us and will determine whether indeed technology has to fit into our culture and our conception of the world …” While true in the abstract, this definition was immediately exteriorized into performance, in the age of modernism as evident in the architecture of Wole Soyinka Center for Culture and the Creative Arts (formerly, National Theater). Showcasing FESTAC as celebration of “African diverse and rich cultural heritage,” and despite its symbolic power, the event focused on exhibitions of dances, fabrics, arts, beads, and crafts. It was a legitimate culture as display, a magnificent monument to a past that was being remembered, but not a living constitutional architecture that was being actively deployed for the future.

This Pan-African impulse, which rightly sought to liberate the African mind from a colonial narrative of helplessness, tragically failed to translate into constitutional reality. The very same spirit that led to the creation of Section 21 in the 1979 Constitution (and its subsequent modification into the 1999 Constitution) stopped short of what the age of civilizationalism now demands. Section 21 calls for the protection of “Technological Culture” (phrase use by Obasanjo in the FESTAC speech), but the 1979/1999 Constitutions did not constitutionalize the living ancient constitutionalism. Traditional institutions—the emirates, the obas, the obis, the councils of elders—which embody the moral primordial public and its complex systems of accountability, were acknowledged but structurally excluded from the formal architecture of governance and economic decision-making. They were honored, but constitutionally neutralized.

The tragic result is a state constitutionally incapable of generating Janus Effects. Nigeria possesses a rich tapestry of ancient constitutionalism(s) that could be its greatest competitive advantage in the global economy. Instead, these traditions are functionally depoliticized, their moral weight relegated to the “cultural” sphere while an amoral, neocolonial civic public dominates the political and economic realm without the legitimizing, accountability-enhancing counterweight of a constitutionalized primordial public.

The initial Pan-African impetus that created Section 21 was a seed of profound insight. In an age of civilizationalism, however, that seed must be updated and allowed to germinate. A state’s civilizational brand in the 21st century is not measured by the vibrancy of its festivals but by the degree to which it has successfully integrated its ancient constitutional principles into its modern governance structures to generate economic dynamism and political legitimacy.

For Nigeria, this requires a radical rethinking of Section 21. It must move from a passive, museum-ized directive to a proactive, structural one. The call should not just be to “protect, preserve and promote cultures,” but to consciously and strategically constitutionalize the principles of ancient constitutionalism—communal accountability, consensus-building, the moral obligation of rulers to the ruled—into the fabric of local government and administrative law. This is the formula that underpins the Janus Effects, and without which Nigeria’s ancient traditions remain museumized or what Wole Soyinka called “policy of glamourised fossilism” in his 1965 play; Kongi’s Harvest, without temporal power, and its modern state remains a Hobbesian leviathan without a moral compass, untethered from the civilizational identity it claims to represent. Interestingly the most powerful symbol of this Hobbesian leviathan is the modernist Wole Soyinka Center for Culture and the Creative Arts in the shape of a military brass hat (or officer’s cap) as a tribute to the Nigerian Armed Forces that had secured a post-civil war unity.

The “Rise of the Rest” is, ultimately, the rise of those who understood their culture not as a memory to be displayed, but as a living constitution to be lived. Until Nigeria learns this lesson and transforms its Section 21 from a cultural platitude into a geopolitical weapon, it will remain a spectator in the global competition of civilizations, rich in heritage but impoverished in power. The good news is that Prince Adewole Adebayo, the SDP presidential candidate as made “Achieving Chapter II” the cornerstone of his manifesto. This would give Nigeria a fresh-start towards – the Nigerian Dream- joining the “Rise of the Rest.”

The ghost of FESTAC must be exorcised, and the seed of Pan-African constitutionalism must finally be allowed to grow into the civilizational state it was always meant to be.