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HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF DIVERSITY IN NIGERIA
By Remi Aitede

Nigeria's formal identity was forged with the amalgamation of the southern and northern protectorates in 1914. The unification of this territory reflected the form and manner by which the British came to conquer, consolidate, and administer the various peoples included in the Nigerian state. The process of subjugation and incorporation of the more than 250 ethnolinguistic groups in Nigeria was protracted, piecemeal, and uneven. In 1914, three large groups predominated: the Muslim Hausa Fulani of the north, the predominantly Christian Igbo in the southeast, and the religiously bicommunal Yoruba in the southwest. The rest of the population was made up of more than 200 ethnic minorities whose size ranged from several thousand to a few million and included a mixed bag of religious adherents. The modernization process has been uneven, owing largely to the indifferent administration under colonial rule. This has generated inequalities and sowed the seeds of distrust in the march toward national integration. The absence of trust, justice, and peace has made constitutional arrangements difficult to attain. Controversy over the nature and state of the union has persisted since 1922 when the country adopted its first constitution. Controversies have raged over the ratio of representation in the central legislature and the timing of self-government. Back in the 1950s, inter-ethnic clashes and separatist tendencies emerged. These controversies informed the adoption of a federal constitution with autonomous regions by the British authorities in 1954. Indeed, a major bone of contention in the 1954 Constitutional Conference was the question of whether or not any region should be granted the right to secede. Eventually, no secession clause was included in the 1954 Constitution, and the country trudged on to independence in 1960.

Independence did not put to rest the tensions of the Nigerian union. Actual or perceived injustices made the renegotiation of the union a persistent question. The AG-intra-party crisis of 1962, the 1963 census controversy, the general atmosphere of the 1964 federal election coupled with the escalation of violence during the western regional election of October 1965, the resort to thuggery and strong-arm politics by party leaders, and the tendency of political parties to be ethnic-based returned the issue of secession to the center stage of national discourse. Tension had become very palpable when the military overthrew the civilian government on January 15, 1966. The military's aim was to put an end to the confusion and crisis generated by the politicians.

However, because the military was largely of Igbo extraction, the event was perceived in ethnic terms. The declaration of a unitary state through Decree 34 of 1966 heightened the fear of Igbo domination in the north. Igbos were massacred, and then a counter-coup ensued. The country eventually drifted into a civil war between 1967 and 1970 when the Igbos attempted secession.

The end of the civil war was marked by spirited efforts to promote national integration. Measures taken included the "no victor, no vanquished" philosophy that informed the post-war reconciliation, rehabilitation, and reconstruction effort; the creation of states by geographical fragmentation; and the federal character principle. Territorial fragmentation created states neither too big nor too powerful to hold the entire country to ransom. Meanwhile, the federal character is a formula designed to ensure equity and justice in the distribution of national resources. Successive Nigerian governments have also invested heavily and directly in symbolic engineering of national unity. Among these integrative national symbols are the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), the unity schools, the national language policy, and direct political education programs. Direct political education has involved rallies and workshops. The aim has been to enable Nigerians to identify and reject acts which threaten the identity, integrity, and solidarity of the nation and engender a sense of belonging among citizens regardless of ethnic origin. The Directorate of Social Mobilization, originally the main agency for this purpose, was replaced by the National Orientation Agency in recent times. However, these programs have been abused by military and civilian leaders, rendering the achievement of a cohesive nation-state a tall order.

Resentment over the dominance of the federal government by one section of the country reached its zenith in the annulment of the presidential election of 1993, apparently won by a southwestern candidate. The action threatened to disintegrate the country and renewed calls for the renegotiation of the Nigerian union. The Constitutional Conference of 1994-95 introduced a federal character commission and rotational formula for all major offices at the national and state levels. The formula institutionalizes the rotation of political offices between the north and south and among the six geo-political zones. Power sharing in Nigeria is usually not applied to political power alone but also to equity, fairness, and justice in the allocation of the fundamental indices of power: economic, military, bureaucratic, media, and intellectual. In spite of this, discontent continues to be expressed in the form of claims and counter claims of marginalization by ethnic groups and the rise of militant ethnic youth movements. Also important are the violent struggles of minority oil-producing communities over neglect and environmental degradation caused by multinational oil companies and the Nigerian state. The ascendance of inter-ethnic clashes across the country as well as religious violence has reinvigorated calls for a Sovereign National Conference to redefine the conditions under which the diverse nationalities in Nigeria are to live together.