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ETHNIC POLITICS AND HEGEMONY: A HISTORICAL APPRAISAL OF COLONIAL AND POST COLONIAL NIGERIA

Nigeria cannot be described as one homogeneous country for its differing peoples and ethnic groups. This fact raises the issues of ethnicity in Nigeria politics from 1960 up till date. With the heterogeneous nature of the country, the tendency of the various nationals is towards parochial consciousness at the expense of national consciousness. The three “hegemonic” ethnic groups constitute 57.8% of the country’s population. All other ethnicities constitute different degrees of minority status. The dominance of the national population by the three majority groups was further enacted by the tripod regional administrative structure of the 1950’s which gave each majority ethnic group a region which forms the foremost context for ethnic mobilization and contestation. As a guide to answering the question on issues of ethnicity in Nigeria, this study documents the origin of ethnicity in Nigeria, ethnic politics in Nigeria before independence and ethnic hegemony in post-independence Nigeria as this played a major role in Nigeria politics over the years. This study employs secondary sources as well as thorough descriptive and analytic methods of report writing.