Analysis of Options for Managing Democratic Ethnic Competition and Conflicts: the Nigerian Experience

Ethnicity has been constructively attacked from the perspective of conflict management and constitutional engineering within several countries in Africa. African leaders have recognized the problem of ethnicity and have sought to address it through many and varied schemes. This paper analyses some of these devices that address democratic ethnic competition and conflicts. The transformation of ethnicity in Nigeria has been enhanced by a variety of ethnic management constitutional devices. Several options (de jure or de facto) to operate multi-ethnic democracy have been tried in Nigeria. Among which includes federalism, tenure limit, geo-political zoning and rotation of power, constitutionally prescribed party systems and electoral systems. The finding is that these practices have been efficacious in mitigating the intense ethnic conflict that has dominated Nigerian politics since independence. They permit the expression of ethnic differences in constructive ways, thus making Nigeria, a good example in the management of democratic ethnic competition and conflicts.