In six thematic parts, Understanding Modern Nigeria by Toyin Falola provides a comprehensive analysis of the complex nature of Nigerian politics and society with a focus on ethnicity, democracy and development. Nigeria is an oil-rich country but despite its colossal oil wealth, the state continues to operate in a failure mode as bad governance, poverty, corruption, political violence, insurgency, banditry, and ethnic and religious conflicts have become the conspicuous features of the country. Nigerians had hoped that the country's return to democratic rule in 1999 would bring about dividends of democracy but these hopes have been dashed.

Falola traces Nigeria's present predicament partly to its ‘complex history with colonialism’ (7). Nigeria, a former colony of Britain, is a conglomeration of an ‘estimated 350 to 400 ethnic groups’ (9) brought together by imperialism. Using the system of divide-and-rule, the colonialists sowed the seed of future crises by pitting one ethnic group against the other. For Falola, Nigeria's problems are symptoms of a lack of unity among the multiple groups in the country. The Nigerian project is about advancing ethnic, religious and regional interests. In Nigeria, these primordial identities determine who gets what and when, and politicians have continued to exploit them ‘for legitimacy and self-aggrandizement’ (21) and for ‘divisive and destructive goals’ (604).

Falola further argues that another source of Nigeria's woes is its practice of federalism. Nigeria is a federation of 36 states and 774 local governments but the Federation operates as a unitary state. Following a careful comparative analysis of federalism, the book posits that while the USA, for example, practices a ‘bottom-up’ model of federalism, Nigeria practices a ‘top-down’ model, which is a ‘bad type of federalism’ (143). Falola is not the first to observe this as other scholars of Nigerian politics have criticised the over-centralised character of Nigerian federalism. In Nigeria resources are concentrated in the centre, making it excessively powerful as evidenced in the overloaded exclusive legislative list. This has consequently contributed to the zero-sum politics, corruption and ethnic favouritism that dominate the politics of the multinational state. One defect of the federal system is that the distribution of political and economic resources and the sharing formula do not ‘reflect the principles of segmented autonomy’ (151). Moreover, the disproportionate concentration of political and economic powers in the centre weakens the states. Likewise, the local government performs poorly in terms of service delivery because it is ‘subservient to the state governments, reducing its ability to serve constituents’ (512).

The author usefully points out Nigeria's bad governance and poor management of the oil economy as critical to understanding the gravitation of the state into rentierism. Being a rentier state, Nigeria relies heavily on oil rents and without oil, ‘the state would collapse’ (285) but corruption continues to erode the gains from the oil economy. In Nigeria, according to him, ‘corruption is endemic’ (278) and attempts to rid the country of it have not been successful due to the ineffectiveness of the anticorruption agencies.

The marginalisation of minority groups such as women, youth, people with disabilities, and others who reside in the ‘other space’ (409) is often overlooked, but Falola is able to demonstrate this as a crucial factor militating against Nigeria's development. For example, he rightly argues that Nigerian youths have become ‘vulnerable and easily recruited for insurgent’ and other criminal activities because of their exclusion from legitimate political activities (471). The gerontocratic nature of the Nigerian political space is one of the causes of this exclusion.

Falola posits that if the Nigerian state is to attain any decent level of development, the people must cultivate a sense of oneness, the political system must stop ‘undermining ethnic minorities’ (608) and the youth must be ‘given a sense of belonging’ (614). Government policies must be directed towards investing in this population segment. In addition, the federal system must be reformed in such a fashion that power is allocated to the sub-national governments. Similarly, Nigeria must embrace a culture of meritocracy but the constitution ‘must expunge its “federal character” clauses’ (622). In addition to political restructuring, Nigeria also needs economic restructuring where the excessive reliance on oil is reduced. The economy needs diversifying in such a way that the agricultural sector is accorded some importance, as it was before the discovery of oil.

The book is well researched, superbly structured and written in a very simple language. However, some of the chapter introductions are rather long and this affects the flow of the discussion. In Chapter 4, for example, 18 pages (74–91) are devoted to the introduction. Similarly, Chapter 10 has 21 pages (243–263) of introduction. Some editorial issues were also observed in the book such as ‘not only is the executive list overloaded’ (149), while ‘executive’ there should be ‘exclusive’. Except for those minor concerns, Understanding Modern Nigeria surely presents a critical analysis of the inherent contradictions in post-colonial Nigeria and will make an interesting read for experts on Nigeria and non-experts alike.