Ethnic Politics and Political Instability in Nigeria (a Study of the Fourth Republic)

ABSTRACT The phenomenon of ethnicity was planted by the colonial imperialists in the pursuit of their economic and political self-interest. This work “ethnic politics and political instability in Nigeria” is motivated by the issue of ethnic division and cultures that keeps raging the integration of the country. The study was supported by Congruence and Marxist theories and empirical literature reviewed preceded the summary of literature review. The survey method was adopted for data collection and analysis. Here, the population of the study spanned the constituents of the Fourth Republic. A population size of 140 was used, from which a total of 120 questionnaires, used as research instruments were retrieved and used sample size for data analysis. The instrument was validated by the project supervisor and the responses were presented in frequency tables and analyzed using simple percentages. Findings showed that the strand of religion is usually intertwined with that of ethnicity in Nigeria as each of the two major religions in the country Christianity and Islam are usually identified with a particular broad division of the country. The study concluded that the fourth republic is characterized by riots, assassinations, broad-day murders, demonstration, arsons, electoral crises as a result of wide spread rigging and robbing of election results, corruption and all sorts of misadministration resulting from ethnicity. The most salient recommendation was that the government through National Orientation Agency (NOA), mass media, seminars, conferences, symposia, church, mosque, educational institutions e.tc should launch aggressive awareness campaign against ethnic politics promote the need for one Nigeria and a redirection of cultural attributions and behavior for good of the whole country.