The politics of ethnic balancing in Nigeria

Abstract

Nigeria as a heterogeneous society has continually faced the problem of ethnicity in her national life. Ethnicity
remains a major factor in the politics of the country and this has been a major problem not only among the
ruling elites but the citizenry who are constantly manipulated for political purposes. The elites on their part
have always seen ethnicity as a fall back mechanism in settling scores whenever there is a disagreement
amongst them. This issue is a fundamental factor in the continued existence of Nigeria as a country in the
sense that, the failure of the elite to forge cohesion and bring about a form of ethnic balancing has continued
to engender various forms of conflict and crisis within the polity. Using Gramsci‘s theory of hegemony, the
paper interrogates the politics of ethnic balancing in Nigeria with a view to proffering solutions for ethnic
harmony which has either been misunderstood or ignored by the elites.