Ethnicity As Potent Contributor Of Political Conflicts In Nigeria

Diploma Thesis from the year 2017 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Africa, , language: English, abstract: Ethnicity remains an important aspect of Nigeria Policy making process used in analysing political conflict among ethnic groups in the country. However, it has not been properly researched in the field of Conflict and Strategic Studies. Therefore, gaps and insufficient literature prompted this study to examine the ethnicity as potent contributor of political conflicts in Nigeria. The study focuses on four major ethnic groups: Yoruba form the South West, Igbos of the South East, Hausa from the North, while the Ijaw represents the South-South region. The study aims to understand and assess the veracity that ethnic methods of politics on socio-political conflict among the ethnic groups, determines what, how and when political considerations are arrived at in Nigeria. The study adopted quantitative research technique to analyse and capture political conflicts among the ethnic groups. The survey research design was adopted via administration of questionnaire (EPQ) with a population of 600 with a cluster sampling techniques used for the ethnic population. A reliability index of 0.69 was got after using Pearson product moment correlation co-efficient via test re-test statistics. The results revealed that there is a significant relationship between ethnic politics and political unrest 'P-value for ethnic politics and political unrest is = .038 = 0.05, hence the stated hypothesis was rejected'. Thus, the study recommended an all-inclusive implementation of true federalism, meritorious rotation of government key positions, with fair resource allocation among ethnic groups and/or states. Nonetheless, the study concluded that intermarriages would facilitate unity and reduce the level of political conflicts in Nigeria, especially among major political gladiators in the country.