“…This is widely the case whether it involves representative democracy or outright autocracy (Cheeseman, 2018a, 2018b; McCauley, 2017). Examples include Nigeria’s federalism that has had several setbacks instigated by ethnicity, religion and natural resource governance (Adamolekun and Kincaid, 1991; Bah, 2005; Diamond, 1988; LeVan, 2015; Obi and Oriola, 2018; Suberu, 1993), the unitary system of Kenya that was marred by ethno-clientelist grievances and political violence prior to the 2010 devolution (Fjelde and Höglund, 2018; Gutiérrez-Romero, 2010; Orr, 2019; Vanden Eynde et al, 2018) and the suppressive regime of Sudan’s Al Bashir that undermined non-Arab participation in public life until its downfall in 2019 (Arman, 2019; Elnaiem, 2019; Sefa-Nyarko, 2016a).…”