How did the Lyttelton Constitution of 1954 create a federal system in Nigeria?

The Lyttelton Constitution of 1954 established a fully federal system in Nigeria by formalizing the division of the country into three distinct geographic regions—the Northern, Western, and Eastern regions—along with the Southern Cameroons and the Federal Territory of Lagos.12

This constitutional framework decentralized authority by granting each region its own:
* Governor
* Premier
* Cabinet
* Legislature
* Civil service12

In contrast, the federal government, based in Lagos, was intentionally designed to be significantly weaker than the regional governments. It was represented by a governor-general, a bureaucracy, a House of Representatives, and a Senate. This structure was a direct response to political pressures from nationalists like Nnamdi Azikiwe and aimed to resolve the friction between central and regional legislatures that had caused the earlier Macpherson Constitution of 1951 to break down.12