INTER-ETHNIC CONFLICT IN NIGERIA: IMPLICATIONS FOR NATIONAL DEVELPOMENT
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Date
2016-06-15
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Alore: Ilorin Journal of Humanities
Abstract
Inter-ethnic conflict is seen as violence between ethnic groups “involving killing the enemy in addition to burning and destroying their crops, livestock and dwellings.”This paper serves as a critical part of an overall objective to develop and promote mechanisms for the understanding and resolution of ethnic and religious conflicts in Nigeria. Since 1982, Nigeria has experienced more than ten major ethnic or religious riots in major cities. Conflicts of various kinds in Nigeria have often been attributed to ethnicity. For instance, communal clashes, electoral violence and others have all been rooted in ethnicity. However, there is an indirect relationship between inter-party competition and ethnicity. What intervenes between ethnicity as independent variable and conflict as a dependent variable is the patrimonial character of the Nigerian state. These violent clashes have wreaked economic, political, and social havoc; caused an enormous number of deaths and injuries; posed serious obstacles to Nigeria's socio-political development as well as retard efforts at nation-building. This calls for utilization of all imaginable strategies including mobilization of ethnic solidarity by political elites. Ethnic acrimony engendered by one instance of mobilization keeps recurring in other instances to entrench inter-ethnic conflict. This paper examined inter-ethnic conflict in Nigeria: Implications for National Development and historical research method was adopted to achieve the objective of the paper. It was discovered that conflict is inevitable in any pluralistic society, but its negative impact should be guided against, while the positive is to be accentuated. Therefore, the paper concludes that government must address promptly and cautiously any crisis that is capable of engendering or fuelling violent conflict in the society.
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Keywords
Inter ethnic, conflicts,, Violence,, Sub ethnic groups, National development,, Nigeria,