THIS PROJECT IS ON THE EVALUATION OF ETHNICITY AND THE ISSUE OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA. THE ETHNICITY IS A SOCIAL CONSULT THAT INDICATES IDENTIFICATION WITH A PARTICULAR GROUP. WHICH IS OFTEN DECENDED FROM COMMON ANCESTORS. MEMBERS AS THE GROUP SHARE COMMON CULTURAL TRAITS (SUCH AS LANGUAGE RELIGION AND DRESS) AND ARE ON AN IDENTIFICABLE MINORITY WITHIN THE LARGER NATION - STATE. WHILE POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IS THE PROGRESSIVE REDUCTION OF ETHNIC CULTURAL AND RELIGION TENSION AND ELEMENTS OF NON-CONTINUITIES IN THE PROCESS OF CREATING A VIRTUALLY HOMOGENOUS CONSTITUTIONAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT LEADING TO THE ATTAINMENT OF A VIABLE POLITICAL CULTURE.

THE CHOICE OF THIS TOPIC WAS NECESSITATED BY THE DESTABILIZING TENDENCIES OF THIS PHENOMENON WHICH HAS INFACT THREATENED THE EXISTENCE OF NIGERIA STATE IN A NUMBER OF INSTABLE AND HAS THUS HINDERED MEANINGFUL NATIONAL POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. THIS WORK IS AN ATTEMPT TO TRACE ITS ORIGIN. THOSE FACTORS THAT PROPAGATE ITS PRESENCE IN NIGERIA POLICIES AND HOLD IT CAN BE ELIMINATED SO AS TO ENHANCE NATIONAL POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT. THOUGH SOLUTIONS HAVE ALWAYS BE OFFERED THEY HAVE NOT YIELDED ANY POSITIVE RESULT HENCE THE NEED TO LOOK FOR A MORE VIABLE OPTION BY LOOKING AT THE DIVISION THAT EXIST IN A PLURALIST SUCH DIFFERENCES. THERE SOLUTION MUST COME FROM POWER SHARING AMONG THE VARIOUS ETHNIC OR OTHER SECTARIAN GROUPS. YET ANOTHER STEP WOULD BE TO INCULCATE RELIGION AUTONOMY AND FEDERATION INTO THE STATE SYSTEM WHICH ENABLE LOCAL AND REGIONAL AUTHORITIES WITH A DEGREE AUTONOMOUS POWER AND AUTHORITY.

TITLE PAGE i

APPROVAL PAGE ii

DEDICATION iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iv

ABSTRACT vi

TABLE OF CONTENT ix

CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY 4

1.2 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY 24

1.3 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 26

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 30

1.5 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 31

1.6 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 32

1.7 DEFINITION OF TERMS 33

CHAPTER TWO

2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW 36

2.1 SUMMARY OFF LITERATURE REVIEW 57

CHAPTER THREE

3.0 METHODOLOGY 58

BRIEF OUTLINE OF THE STUDY 58

3.1 DESIGN OF THE STUDY 59

3.2 AREA OF THE STUDY 60

3.3 POPULATION OF THE STUDY 60

3.4 SAMPLE OF THE STUDY 61

3.5 INSTRUMENT FOR DATA COLLECTION 62

3.6 VALIDATION OF THE INSTRUMENT 63

METHOD OF DATA ANALYSIS 63

CHAPTER FOUR

4.0 DATA PRESENTATION 64

4.1 DATA ANALYSIS 64

4.2 FINDINGS 69

CHAPTER FIVE

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS 69

RECOMMENDATIONS

CONCLUSION

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

SUGGESTION FOR FURTHER STUDIES

REFERENCES

QUESTIONNAIRE

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

The realm of politic is the field of greatest conflict in the society. This is not surprising since policies are the process whereby society arbitrates over power and allocation or score resource. However in modern western political dictionary political this ability that been seen as characteristic of the developing country or countries in transition in African Latin American and Asia transition in Africa Latin America and Asia .

The political disability in African countries could be attributed to many factors ranging from the frequently from the frequency of militating coup to political violence and civil disorders, which are all as a result of the existence and dominance of social elenge such as religion, regionalism tribalism and most especially ethnicity. Ethnicity in our political life having proved uncontrollable deserves serious attention. It is evident that this Nigeria, which can be seen from the frequent changes of government and coup date in the country. This study is therefore going to concentrate on how the problem of ethnicity has affected the political development of Nigeria.

Nigeria is a nation whose history is replete with numerous and varied existing and political threats to national political development. In colonial era till date, the sad yet unfortunate story has been that of one geo-ethnic group attempting to assert and, in the process, establish her hegemony over the other, perceived as posing a veritable threat to its very existence. Consequent upon this alleged threat of dominance it has become fashionable to see a particular sub national group treating session from the rest of the federation unit on the basis of on from of disaffection or the other. For instance in 1953 the Northern segment of the country called for session in the following year. It was the west, therefore, secession urges became dormant a determines attempt to out of Nigeria to constitute in self into an independent entity. It is necessary to state that these secession attempted his greatly affected the political development of Nigeria. How these various secession attempted has affected political development of Nigeria will be discussed in subsequent chapter.

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Nigeria by over four hundred ethnic group with each having m it own language and tradition the dominant ethnic groups as we have noted above are the Hausa- Fulani in the North, the Yoruba’s in the and the Igbo’s in the East.

Nigeria was formed by the gradual incorporation of different areas and people into which empire from 1861 onward and took it final shape in 1914 the Amalgam a nation of the Southern and Northern protectorates in 1939 the Southern protectorate was divided into Eastern and Western regions there are yet other force within each of these dominant regions. These were the minorities are those who are shadowed and discriminated against by the three major ethnic groups in the North, there is the middle belt, the west had mid-west and the Calabar Ogoja river (COR) area in the eat.

From above analysis one is led to believe that the claims of separate social group must necessary be incompatible with the demands of the w hole social group this is not usually, the case for instance there are French and English speaking condition in Canada Creak and Shovas in Czecholo Vakia, the French Italian and German in Switzerland

No doubt political instability affect the political as well as economic development of any nation but it consequence are often exaggerated. It has been argued that political instability is inherent in and country but the ability of the political system to certain stress generated within it at any given time determines political instability. While rejecting this argument, it is important to note that the British introduced ethnicity into Nigeria polities during the colonial period and what they did at independence was to create a political system hat was unable to contain the stress generated by this ethnicity

Thus a British colonial governor characterized Nigeria as a collection of Self contained and mutually independent native state. Separated from one mother and tradition and by ethnological racial, tribal political social and religion Barrier’s (Clifford 1920) it is not clamed hat hetegenous cultural background does not affect political stability, the ability to weld the different ethnic groups together is the process of nation building, which is not an easy ask. It involves the transformation of the pre-colonial political entire of the societies with the Nigeria temporary into a virile political culture the would sustain the Nigeria state. When the alien culture of Europe impinged on the existing societies is credited a problem of adjustment which required new technique and ideas to deal with the new order. Incidentally the instability as a result of ethnicity and other social colleagues which permeated the Nigeria political scenes, this has consequently affected the political development of Nigeria.

What made ethnicity to assume an alarming proportion in the polities of Nigeria was that the focus of each of the dominant ethnic group was on equal share of race-course.

The question was who get what, how and by how much. They wanted to maximize their individual security the control of the lion-share of the country source resource

Today the biggest threat to nation political development is that of lack of unity. In the absence of duty of a kind to will became difficult to define common national objective identification of a common economy. The greatest threat to unity today is ethnicity.

This work is therefore throughout a comitial review of the problem of ethnicity and it effect on the political development of Nigeria since independence till date.