ABSTRACT The article focuses on the crisis of the academy in Nigerian federalism. It begins by departing from the literature that conceptualizes the crisis of African universities in terms of state incorporation of the academy. The article draws attention to the necessity of differentiating federal polities from unitary systems and presents federations as being distinct for their assignment of university education competence to make for jurisdictional pluralism. Drawing on the fiscal and comparative federalism literatures, it traces the crisis of the academy partly to federal erasure of jurisdictional authority of the states, and partly to a fiscal regime of distributive revenue pool and the associated lack of consequences for opportunistic behaviour. It shows that the erasure of jurisdictional pluralism exposes the entire university system to adverse developments at the centre. It also shows that opportunistic behaviour weakens public institutions and undermines the capacity of the universities to deliver services.