STEREOTYPED NIGERIA: Religion & Ethnicity as Identity Politics

Innocent-Franklyn Ezeonwuka

Abstract


From 1914 when the Nigerian project came into being, and up till the present, it has continued to subsist on a faulty conspiratory agenda. In a human body, auto-rejection becomes a life threatening course when there is practically no desire or will to tryout other reasonable alternatives. Humans are driven by interests, and the ambivalence of human interests is not questionable. Since the actualization of these interests are dictated by the chess game that is socialization and politics, the focal point must revolve on identity consult. Under identity, the persona, selfhood and socio-cultural appurtenances inextricably linked to issues of power, value systems and ideology revolve. Identity is undoubtedly a historically and socially constructed concept. Nigeria’s redundant mission in state craftry and development is cumulatively systemic, and the prognosis is simply poor. Clandestine external interests have continued to stoke the sharp edges of prebendal divisions domestically, thereby re-enacting national discord, suspicion and acrimony. No true Nigerian identity and patriotism can emerge as long as religion remains the ‘opium’, that is made to run through the ethnic arteries of the disparate peoples occupying the innermost part of the Gulf of Guinea.

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