Indigeneship, bureaucratic discretion, and institutional change in Northern Nigeria

Abstract

This article shows how bureaucratic discretion in the implementation of Nigeria's power-sharing institutions, the Federal Character, has led to the formalization of local informal norms on belonging. Under the Federal Character, Nigerians have to be 'indigenes' to access certain economic and political opportunities at the federal as well as state and local government levels. However, what makes a person indigenous is not formally defined, leaving street-level officials free to decide how to allocate indigeneship certificates. Using original qualitative and quantitative data on Kano, northern Nigeria's largest city, this article shows that local officials faced with this discretion often turn to locally salient norms on belonging. In Kano, several of these norms set ethnic and religious criteria for belonging, particularly those that prioritize the rights of the 'native' over those of the citizen. The article demonstrates how street-level bureaucrats use these ethnic and religious...