Graduate Program

Political Science

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

2005

Thesis Director

David Carwell

Thesis Committee Member

Lillian Barria

Thesis Committee Member

Ryan Hendrickson

Abstract

The policy goal of a Pax Nigeriana in the African continent is hardly realizable without a focused confrontation by Nigeria of its own security deficits. A security and politically deficient Nigeria will have nothing to offer the African continent in terms of peace and political stability if it cannot by example overcome its own accidental and structural flaws.

With this in mind, the work sets out to address the origin, nature and resolution of conflict in Nigeria. Before adequate resolution therapy could be recommended for violent conflicts in Nigeria, any intending researcher must of necessity address the origin and nature of these conflicts. Proceeding with this understanding, the hypothesis makes it clear that ethnicity instead of religion is the major source of conflict in Nigeria.

Ethnicity for Nigerians is a given, religion on the other hand is personal, received, and could change depending on the receiver. Thus, in Nigeria, religion was primarily accepted along ethnic lines with Igbos being predominantly Christians, Hausa-Fulani being Moslems, Yorubas being either Christian or Moslem, while the rest practice African religion.

Like many African countries as the literature shows, ethnicity has its origin in the stratification of ethnic groups in Nigeria. The successive colonial governments stratified ethnic groups in Nigeria according to color, military might and political organization. This thus created a system of inequality that was nurtured and maintained. With this creation, attention was shifted from a common enemy (colonial government) to the mutual and interlocking enemy that the various ethnic groups represented to each other in a new sociopolitical order called Nigeria.

Religion on the one hand, even though a constant feature in politics, represent a conflict between the almighty godly state and the various religious authorities whose domain moral questions and religious dictates reside. On the other hand, it represents a conflict between religious elites that have privatized it, or at best a struggle for dominance of the soul of a political Nigeria.

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