Reciprocal Retaliation and Local Linkage : Federalism as an Instrument of Opposition Organizing in Nigeria

How do local politics shape national political competition in Africa? This essay explores opposition party formation in Nigeria, where citizens recently voted out the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) after 16 years. But rather than analysing the 2015 election cross-sectionally or in terms of aggregate indicators of performance such as the level of violence or the rate of Gross Domestic Product growth, I focus on local politics. Drawing upon field research and election observation in Rivers, a key opposition state, I show how subnational governments, including one particular local government, leveraged legal authority and economic development to challenge the federal government. Nigeria’s federalism has historically served as a mechanism for resource distribution and ethno-political representation. It has been undermined by military rule, centralised oil revenues, and violent regional insurgencies. Despite constitutional barriers, judicial ambiguity, and retaliation from the PDP, I argue that federalism provided the opposition All Progressives Congress a partisan basis for interest coordination, and in Rivers specifically it gave local frustrations a national profile that helped undermine PDP at the polls.