Ethnic Management in the 1979 Nigerian Constitution

Nigeria, the most populous African nation, is also the mostheterogeneous. The desire to contain the many ethnic groupswithin the framework of one united country has necessitatedpolitical experiments of federalism and, even for a brief while,unitarism. A thirty-month war was fought to prevent secessionand then a constitutional compact was drawn up to secure theunity of the country. The constitution sought to guarantee ethnicequality and equal ethnic opportunities in governments, politicalparties, and nongovernment public establishments. All governmentand parastatal organizations had to reflect the plural compositionor the federal character of the nation. It was a very ingeniousdevice, but did not fully succeed in neutralizing divisive ethnicpassions.