Managing multiple minority problems in a divided society: the Nigerian experience

Abstract

The management of ethnic problems has tended to be complicated by the complex ethnic situations which give rise to them. It is known for example that ethnicity rarely exists in a pure form, being usually combined with other conflict-generating cleavages, such as religion, race, class and regionalism, in mutually reinforcing ways. Ethnicity is also situational, fluid and intermittent, while ethnic boundaries are constantly changing. In addition, levels of ethnic consciousness and political mobilisation differ among groups, for reasons of different perceptions of relative privileges or deprivation, history of inter-group relations, effects of state policies or actions, dispositions and strategies adopted by other competing groups, and so on. For these and other reasons, common stimuli like democratisation, economic prosperity or decline, and transformatory social processes, all of which impact on ethnicity, produce different effects on ethnic groups.These differences and complexities have implications for the management of ethnic problems and conflicts. For one thing, ethnic conflicts tend to be intractable, especially where their management does not take full account of their complexity. The temptation to proffer catch-all management formulae, such as federalism, bills of rights, secularity and so on, as if all ethnic conflicts can be dealt with uniformly or in one fell swoop, is the product of the fallacy of oversimplification. It goes without saying that conflict situations must be properly understood for the appropriate ‘therapies’ to be formulated and applied. If this is done, it will be found that more nuanced solutions are required to cope with the demands of the complex situations.