Nigeria, a Multi Ethnic Nation

INTRODUCTION Nigeria is a multi-ethnic nation with various cultural groups that are about three hundred in number. In 1947, Nigeria was not yet a nation. Nigeria now has been a multi-national society, one of the sociological problems of building Nigeria as a nation is multi-ethnicity with its concomitants such as multilingualism and completive ethnicity. There were varieties of lines which existed between the various states and people which were the predecessors of modern Nigeria. But on the other side, Ethnographers estimates that, there are over 250 ethnic groups make up Nigeria. Each of these ethnic groups consists of smaller social groups for example Yoruba consists of the Ekiti, Ijesha, Oyo etc. The Housa have their various indigenous states but none of these groups however was large before the colonial government that now decided to join them together in the year 1914 and later Balkanized Nigeria into three regions in 1914 along ethnic lines. There have been cases of multi-ethnic vices such as allegiance to ethnic group, intra-cultural and inter-ethnc agonism, hostility, aggression, bitterness, hatred, mistrust in the country which have not agued well for the building of a virile Nigeria nation . Instead of harnessing our diversities toward viable nation building, we have become slaves to our ethnic origin to which our allegiance is largely focused at the detriment of nation building. Interfaced with religion, statist and class, ethnicity is a potent reality in the Nigeria federal equation. The drop down of the economy, Nigeria is from the result from nigged ethnic particularisms of given constituents units of the Nigerian nation. But before we tell about how multi-ethnic nature of Nigeria has affected its socio-political development, we will mention some few important words.
ETHNIC GROUP This concept has many definitions from various people. In United States, Gardon in 1964 says “that an ethnic group is any group which is set off by race, religion,

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