Experts list ways of mitigating ethnic tension, grievances

Experts have urged Nigerians to find ways of closing the ethnic and religious divides to be able to overcome the socio-economic challenges confronting them.

They made the call in Abuja at the bi-monthly in-house seminar organised by the Centre for the Study of the Economies of Africa (CSEA) and the Africa School of Economics (ASE).

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Ms. Narrelle Gilchrist from the Politics Department, Princeton University, delivered a paper on the theme of the session, ‘A Way to Mitigate Ethnic Tension? Re-examining the Ability of Ethnic Federalism to Reduce Group Grievances in Nigeria’.

According to her, Nigeria is an essential case of ethnic federalism to study as ethnic federalism has succeeded in reducing ethnic tension, in some regions of Nigeria, but in other areas, it has been ineffective.

“Looking at this single system of ethnic federalism can illustrate why decentralization of power might stem some ethnic conflicts while failing to stop others, because of its context specific design and enforcement.

“In my cross-national regression results, I find that ethnic federalism on average does have a mitigating impact on conflict, but the effect is conditional on groups’ having reduced grievances under decentralization. In my study of Nigeria,” she said in the 45-page report.

Country Director, CARE International Nigeria, Dr. Hussaini Abdu, said that the states of the federation were not working, because they were military decrees, thus the current democracy is incapable of creating a state.

“You go to the National Assembly, there are about 210 demands for additional states, but it is impossible because of the process of creating states, the contentions involved. The states we have today was the creation of the military.

“If the military government had continued, we would have had more states. Because every decade, we had more states,” Abdu said.

National Coordinator of Good Governance Team (GGT), Mr. Tunde Salman, said that the colonial arrangement has not resolved the identity crisis and has to be resolved as part of measures to mitigate ethnic tensions.

According to him, despite the provision for the appointment of at least a minister from each of the states of the federation, there is still agitation as different segments in the states still want their own to be appointed.