Nigeria’s Problems Are Foundational; We Must Return to the Pre-1966 Structure – Femi Emmanuel

Pastor Femi Emmanuel, Host of the Turning Point Global Family, offered an unflinching assessment of Nigeria’s political and structural challenges, insisting that the nation’s problems are “foundational” and rooted in historical distortions that began long before independence. He made this known while speaking on Inside Sources with Laolu Akande aired on Channels TV on Sunday. […]

Pastor Femi Emmanuel, Host of the Turning Point Global Family, offered an unflinching assessment of Nigeria’s political and structural challenges, insisting that the nation’s problems are “foundational” and rooted in historical distortions that began long before independence.

He made this known while speaking on Inside Sources with Laolu Akande aired on Channels TV on Sunday.

Emmanuel argued that the country was built on a faulty framework imposed by colonial interests. According to him, the seeds of instability were sown from the very beginning.
Emmanuel argued that as long as Nigeria continues operating under this imposed structure—centralised, rigid, and incompatible with the country’s diversity—its developmental progress will remain stunted.
“The problem of Nigeria is foundational. Until we go back to who we were before 1966, we may never get it right,” he said firmly.
“Nigeria was structured to fail ab initio. From the British colonial masters,” he said. He urged Nigerians to revisit historical records, particularly the widely circulated testimony of former British colonial officer Harold Smith. Emmanuel said Smith’s confessions reveal how decisions taken in London deliberately skewed Nigeria’s demographics and political power balance.
“I always ask people to Google and search for Mr Harold Smith’s confessions on Nigeria. That old man who said his conscience can’t let him rest and go to his grave and confessed how the British colonial masters mandated the British officers that were here – he was one of them – to make sure that: census was corrupted, manipulated and given the largest population to the North. And that the election of 1959 prior to independence go to the North. It was a special directive from the Home Office,” he emphasized.
For Emmanuel, this manipulation—handing political dominance to one region at the inception of the republic—laid the groundwork for decades of distrust, imbalance, and instability.
“So, from the beginning, the country was handed over to the North. That is the basis of our problems,” he said.
Beyond the colonial design, Emmanuel traced Nigeria’s contemporary woes to the events of 1966 when the country’s federal structure was interrupted. According to him, the 1966 coup destroyed what was left of Nigeria’s delicate balance by replacing true federalism with a unitary system—a move he believes the nation has never recovered from.
“We mismanaged our differences when the 1966 coup came and suspended the federal constitution and slammed on us the unitary system which we are still battling with today,” he noted.
Building on his position, Emmanuel called for an urgent national conversation around restructuring—not as a political slogan, but as a necessary return to a workable model. He believes Nigeria must revive the original federal principles that once allowed regions to grow at their own pace and thrive based on their resources, priorities, and culture.
He argued that the path to stability, unity, and national renewal lies not in superficial reforms but in a deliberate return to the foundational structures that once allowed the regions to coexist productively.
For Emmanuel, the pre-1966 system offered Nigeria its best chance at nationhood—a model built on true federalism, regional autonomy, and accountability. Only by returning to that template, he insists, can Nigeria chart a new path forward.