—Alemayehu Fentaw Weldemariam, PhD Student, Indiana University Maurer School of Law; Fellow, Center for Constitutional Democracy

Ethiopia’s constitutional order stands at a moment of profound instability. A federation still in the process of defining its territorial boundaries, institutional guardians, and political community now confronts renewed calls to abandon parliamentarism in favor of a presidential system. Advocates present the shift as a straightforward cure for governmental fragility—an institutional reset capable of delivering executive clarity, national direction, and political stability. Nigeria is frequently invoked as the model: an African federation that, despite internal diversity and episodic turbulence, has sustained a presidential system for more than four decades.

Yet the appeal is largely illusory. The Nigerian analogy rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of how presidentialism has survived there, and why its survival offers no guidance for Ethiopia. Nigeria’s presidency is not stabilizing; it is stabilized—held aloft by a dense web of centripetal institutions designed to fracture, dilute, and contain ethnic and regional power. Nigeria’s architects deliberately engineered a federation in which territorially concentrated identities were politically blunted rather than constitutionally empowered. Ethiopia’s constitutional trajectory runs in the opposite direction. Its federal settlement was built on recognition, not fragmentation—on the premise that nations, nationalities, and peoples are constitutional actors entitled to territorial integrity and self-government.

Recent developments make the stakes unmistakably clear. As Elias Meseret has reported, Ethiopia may be preparing to adopt presidentialism alongside an impending constitutional amendment process. The Ethiopian Citizens for Social Justice party has formally urged the National Dialogue Commission to place presidentialism on its agenda, and this position increasingly overlaps with signals emanating from the ruling Prosperity Party. These moves unfold at the very moment Ethiopia’s federal map is being radically reconfigured: the dissolution of the SNNPR into four new regional states, unresolved territorial disputes in Western Tigray and Raya, and escalating demands for further statehood all reveal a federation still undergoing constitutional formation.

A presidential system presupposes a settled demos, stable federal units, and political losers who trust that electoral defeat does not entail erasure. Ethiopia, by contrast, is a federation whose constituent units remain in motion, whose territorial disputes remain unresolved, and whose national groups remain deeply mobilized around existential claims to land, security, and recognition. To graft presidentialism onto such a foundation is not to strengthen the federation but to imperil it—to nationalize every unresolved grievance and transform every election into a referendum on the status of peoples and territories.

This essay argues that Ethiopia is not Nigeria—and that the constitutional logics that sustain Nigerian presidentialism are structurally incompatible with Ethiopia’s still-unfinished federation. Drawing on the insights of Juan Linz, Arend Lijphart, Donald Horowitz, Assefa Fiseha, Rotimi Suberu, Daniel Elazar, and comparative federalism more broadly, it demonstrates why presidentialism cannot stabilize a deeply divided polity whose fundamental constitutional questions remain open, contested, and constitutionally unsettled.

The Structural Demands of Presidentialism

Comparative constitutional design converges on a basic fact: presidentialism presupposes a relatively settled political community. Linz warns that presidentialism transforms politics into a winner-take-all contest. Lijphart emphasizes that divided societies require consensus institutions—coalitions, proportionality, mutual vetoes—not plebiscitary executives. Horowitz demonstrates that presidentialism is tolerable only when accompanied by sophisticated incentive structures—particularly vote pooling, territorial fragmentation, and institutional designs that prevent ethnic blocs from dominating the center (Horowitz 612–615). Elazar and Stepan stress that multinational states require power-sharing, not power concentration.

Ethiopia satisfies none of these preconditions—not because its regions are artificial or illegitimate, but because the federation remains young, fluid, and still undergoing territorial and constitutional self-definition.

Ethiopia’s Federation Is Unfinished — A Going Constitutional Concern

Unlike Nigeria’s 36-state order, Ethiopia’s federal map is not a settled constitutional fact. It is an evolving landscape shaped by referenda, reorganization, displacement, conflict, and renewed statehood demands. And crucially—this is the point Assefa underscores—Ethiopia is not merely diverse; it is a deeply divided, territorially anchored polity whose national groups are politically mobilized and whose claims to self-rule are existential. In such settings, institutional designers cannot simply adopt integrationist, centripetal federal models of the Nigerian or South African type. Where cleavages are territorial and historically rooted, federal design must follow the cleavage, not suppress it.

The dissolution of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR) since 2019 into four separate regional states—Sidama, South West Ethiopia, South Ethiopia, and Central Ethiopia—illustrates this fluidity. Sidama became a region in June 2020 after its referendum; South West Ethiopia followed in November 2021; and the 2023 referendum produced the South Ethiopia and Central Ethiopia regional states. Ethiopia’s constituent units have thus expanded from nine to twelve, with several zones initiating or reviving statehood claims. Further territorial reconfigurations remain possible.

These developments were not surprises; they reflect long-suppressed demands re-entering the constitutional arena, albeit within a centrally managed process shaped to reinforce the Amhara–Oromo coalition that replaced the TPLF. But the deeper challenge lies in unresolved constitutional boundary disputes. Western Tigray and sectors of Raya remain under de facto Amhara administration despite their de jure status as Tigrayan territories under the federal constitution. Their future must be determined through constitutional process, not unilateral control. The restoration of occupied territories and repatriation of displaced populations is a matter of principle; the difficulty lies in securing a durable settlement acceptable to both sides.

These are not technical anomalies. They strike at the foundation of Ethiopia’s constitutional order. With constituent units unsettled, territorial claims unresolved, and constitutional guardians incapacitated, Ethiopia finds itself at the opposite pole from Nigeria. Ethiopia’s cleavage structure demands accommodation—self-rule, recognition, meaningful autonomy—rather than the integrationist blurring that undergirds Nigeria’s centripetal engineering.

In such a context, presidentialism does not stabilize. It nationalizes every unresolved territorial claim, transforming elections into existential referenda on the status of peoples and regions.

Why Nigerian Presidentialism Survives — and Why Its Survival Does Not Travel

Nigeria is frequently presented as a model for African presidential federalism. This is a misreading. Nigeria’s federation reflects a permanent struggle to reconcile national integration with the accommodation of deep sectarian identities—ethnic, religious, and regional. Its original three-region federation collapsed because it empowered dominant blocs and marginalized minorities.

What followed was not an organic maturation of presidentialism but a deliberate integrationist engineering project—precisely the kind Horowitz describes:

• The three mega-regions were replaced with twelve states in 1967, later expanded to nineteen and then thirty-six, to prevent any region from functioning as an ethnic power base (Horowitz 603–607).
• State creation fragmented old hegemonies, diffused ethnopolitical power, and transformed interethnic conflict into localized disputes.
• Nigeria adopted the federal character principle to prevent monopolization of federal power.
• Informal presidential rotation emerged to mitigate fears of permanent domination.

Horowitz’s conclusion is unambiguous: Nigeria’s stability results not from presidentialism but from the extraordinary federal scaffolding erected to contain it (612–620). Even so, these mechanisms have only dampened—never eliminated—the volatility inherent in presidential competition in a divided state.

Nigeria is therefore a poor analogy for Ethiopia.

The Conditional Scenario: Could Ethiopia Ever Make Presidentialism Less Dangerous?

In theory, Ethiopia could reduce the dangers of presidentialism by undertaking profound constitutional stabilization: lawful resolution of territorial disputes, rationalization of oversized regions, and the creation of more symmetrical constituent units. Article 47 provides a framework for state creation; the obstacle is not institutional absence but institutional non-compliance. The federal government has repeatedly obstructed or selectively applied these mechanisms, converting routine constitutional processes into moments of confrontation.

Such reforms are not minor adjustments. They amount to state-rebuilding operations requiring broad cross-national consensus—something Ethiopia does not currently possess. Even if achieved, presidentialism would remain high-risk. And if perceived as a mechanism to consolidate the current prime minister’s authority, constitutional reform would unravel immediately.

Presidentialism cannot precede the stabilization of the federation. At best, it can follow it—and only with significant insulation.

African Regional Norms Confirm the Comparative Lesson

African regional jurisprudence offers no support for plebiscitary presidentialism in divided, territorially mobilized federations. The African Charter’s Article 13 requires inclusive governance. Tanganyika Law Society v. Tanzania condemns exclusionary political structures. The African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance underscores diffusion of authority, executive restraint, and consensus-building.

These norms align with Assefa’s analysis: where cleavages are territorially concentrated and politically mobilized, constitutionalism must institutionalize inclusion, not concentrate power.

Ethiopia’s Constitutional Future

Ethiopia’s federation is unfinished—still in constitutional formation, with unsettled boundaries, mobilized national groups, incapacitated adjudicatory organs, and a political community that has not consolidated into a stable demos. Presidentialism presupposes the opposite: tamed cleavages, stabilized units, resolved territorial disputes, and citizens who trust that electoral defeat does not threaten their constitutional existence. Ethiopia is not there yet.

Nigeria’s experience reveals how much coercive scaffolding is required to keep presidentialism from tearing a heterogeneous state apart. Its centripetal architecture—hyper-fragmented states, an overbearing center, federal character, rotation—was designed to blunt majorities and dissolve territorially coherent nationalities. Ethiopia cannot replicate this model without repudiating its core constitutional premise: that nations, nationalities, and peoples possess self-government rights that cannot be engineered away.

As Assefa Fiseha reminds us, Ethiopia’s liberation-era actors rejected Nigeria’s model of “geographic federalism” precisely because it fractured ethnonational groups rather than recognizing them. Ethiopia’s constitutional identity is therefore fundamentally incompatible with the logic of Nigerian presidentialism.

To introduce presidentialism now—before territorial disputes are resolved, before constitutional institutions are restored, before constituent units are reconfigured—is to force a fragile federation into a constitutional mold designed for a stable state. It would nationalize grievances, magnify territorial contests, and convert elections into existential struggles.

Ethiopia is not Nigeria. And unless the federation is completed, consolidated, and constitutionally secured, Ethiopia cannot become a presidential polity without risking yet another cycle of national crisis.

Suggested citation: Alemayehu Fentaw Weldemariam, Ethiopia Is Not Nigeria: Why Ethiopia’s Fluid, Unfinished Federation Cannot Sustain a Plebiscitary Presidency, Int’l J. Const. L. Blog, Dec. 12, 2025, at: http://www.iconnectblog.com/ethiopia-is-not-nigeria-why-ethiopias-fluid-unfinished-federation-cannot-sustain-a-plebiscitary-presidency/