International records / OpenAlex research

Ethnicity versus elite interest and behaviour as sources of conflict and instability in the Nigerian political system

This study attempts to assess the extent to which instability in the Nigerian political system is the result of ethnic antagonism or of divergent elite politico-economic interests. Most scholarly treatments of African politics have explained political conflict in terms of ethnic antagonism, and in regard to Nigeria, political analysts have more often than not attributed the instability of the political system to tribalism or the cultural pluralism of Nigerian society. Our study questions this approach to the analysis of Nigerian politics, and suggests that tribalism is not the instinctive beha…