By Odeh FRIDAY

THREE decades of constitutional amendments have rearranged the furniture of governance in Nigeria without unlocking the front door. The answer is simpler and more uncomfortable than another cycle of amendments. 

Nigeria boasts numerous ostensibly independent institutions. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), public broadcasters such as the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), and the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN). Yet what is defined as independence in statute often amounts to independence at the executive’s pleasure. This is not a failure of law. It is a failure of design. 

The Nigerian President appoints the leadership and governing boards of most federal agencies, with the Senate confirming nominees through processes that rarely alter executive preference. The result is a system in which independence formally exists but operates within boundaries set by the appointing authority. Institutions are expected to act as checks while remaining structurally dependent on the very power they are meant to constrain, chaining the watchdog to the throne it guards. 

The NBC revoked licences of 52 television and radio stations weeks before the 2023 general election. None of its board members was chosen by a journalist, a civil society representative, or a citizen panel. When regulators are appointed through political channels, neutrality becomes difficult to demonstrate and even harder to sustain. 

The same structural tension defines electoral governance. The credibility of elections is fatally compromised when the President nominates the body that adjudicates whether the President’s party has won or lost. At that point, the issue is not competence. It is design. No amount of digital reform or administrative efficiency can fully resolve a system where the appointing authority and the subject of oversight are too closely aligned. 

Elsewhere, democracies have reached a different conclusion: independence cannot rely on restraint alone. It must be engineered. The Czech Republic offers a useful reference point, in which I had the opportunity to observe elements of this system firsthand as part of the 2025 Cool Czechia Programme, an initiative of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs that convened young African leaders to engage with public institutions, media organisations, and governance actors. 

Visits to Czech Television and Czech Radio made one thing clear: independence is not a slogan; it is architecture. In the Czech model, candidates for public media councils are nominated not by the executive but by a broad range of civil society actors, including universities, cultural bodies, professional associations, labour unions, and civic organisations. Parliament then elects members from this pool. 

The state does not own the entry point to governance. Members serve fixed six-year terms, with one-third rotated every two years. Institutional memory survives political change. Council members are restricted from holding political office. Their mandate includes appointing leadership, approving budgets, and safeguarding editorial independence. 

The system does not remove politics. It disperses it, making it contestable rather than concentrated. Nigeria’s system does the opposite. 

The institutions that must be reformed

Media and broadcasting institutions are the clearest starting point. NTA, FRCN, Voice of Nigeria, and NBC cannot claim editorial or regulatory independence while their governing structures remain tied to executive appointment. Their boards should be constituted through nominations from journalism associations, civil society coalitions, academic institutions, and professional bodies, with transparent legislative confirmation. This should not be symbolic consultation but real selection power. 

Electoral governance sits at the centre of democratic legitimacy. INEC cannot continuously operate under an appointment pipeline controlled by the same political system it is meant to regulate. In 2022, late President Buhari nominated a member of his media team as a national commissioner of INEC. It is difficult to argue for neutrality. A multi-stakeholder nomination system is not an innovation; it is a correction. 

Anti-corruption institutions face the same design tension. The EFCC and the ICPC investigate politically exposed persons while remaining structurally dependent on political appointment systems. That does not invalidate their work, but it weakens public confidence in their independence. 

Even civic institutions such as the National Orientation Agency (NOA) reflect the same pattern: centralised appointment, decentralised accountability. The point is not that these institutions are non-functional. It is that their design assumes political neutrality will emerge from political control. That assumption no longer holds. 

Constitutional amendments keep missing the point

Nigeria’s constitutional amendment cycles have been frequent, resource-intensive, and politically heavy. Meanwhile, they rarely address the core issue: who controls institutional entry points. The House of Representatives of the 10th National Assembly has approved over 80 constitutional amendment bills while considering more than 200 proposals, as the Senate runs a parallel process through its Constitution Review Committee. Yet, the core structural flaw, the executive monopoly on appointments to nominally independent institutions, has not been the centrepiece of any major reform package. This omission is not incidental. It is the wound that all other amendments fail to close. 

Most reforms instead focus on administrative adjustments, eligibility rules, or procedural updates. Institutions may be renamed, timelines adjusted, or oversight rebalanced on paper, but the architecture of control remains intact. This is why reform in Nigeria often feels like motion without transformation. The system changes its language without changing its logic. 

In the 11th National Assembly, Nigeria does not need another amendment cycle. It needs legislation that takes board appointments out of the presidency’s gift and returns them to the public that funds these institutions. 

Many of the changes required do not need constitutional revision to begin. They can be implemented through enabling legislation that redefines nomination processes, strengthens tenure security, and introduces staggered leadership cycles for independent institutions. Constitutional change may eventually be necessary to entrench these reforms. But waiting for it has already become a familiar form of delay. 

As Nigeria approaches the 2027 Nigerian general elections, political parties will again present manifestos promising reform. The language will be familiar: restructuring, accountability, efficiency, renewal. The unresolved implementation of the Oronsaye Report by President Tinubu, especially its recommendations on merging and scrapping redundant agencies, is a reminder that it is easier to announce than to execute. It shows the lack of sustained political incentives to implement reform blueprints. 

Institutional reform often survives only until it begins to reduce control. At that point, it becomes negotiable. That is why the timing matters, not because reform is new, but because its target has become clearer. The question is no longer whether institutions should be independent. It is whether those who benefit from current appointment structures are willing to redesign them. 

The question is straightforward: Should institutions that regulate speech, oversee elections, and investigate corruption be governed by the same authority they are meant to constrain, or by structures that distribute power beyond the executive? What is at stake is not the creation of more institutions or better laws, but a redesign of how power is appointed, insulated, and held to account in practice. 

Nigeria has answered that question for decades. The result is something more enduring: a permanent tension between formal independence and practical dependence. Changing this requires more than the language of reform. It requires a willingness to confront how power is currently distributed. 

Independence is often described as a principle. In practice, it is a design choice. And design choices, unlike political promises, tend to outlast the people who make them. 

 Odeh Friday is the Country Director, Accountability Lab Nigeria