The work focuses on ethnic identity and constitutional representative govern-ance in Nigeria and how it has been aided or impeded by ethnic politics. De-mocracy, in the liberal perspective, is government by popular representation; a form of government in which the supreme power is retained by the people, but is indirectly exercised through a system of representation and delegated authority periodically renewed; a constitutional representative government. Today in Nigeria, there is serious rivalry among the ethnic groups over issues such as power and resource sharing formula, the fear of domination, uneven development and many more. It is clear that constitutional representative governance in Nigeria has fallen far below expectation, as primordial ethnic loyalties are still deep seated. Ethnic identity is seen as the major cause of this failure; it has sentence of Nigeria to pernicious and precarious situations. For Nigeria to move forward democratically, politics of identity remained unhealthy for her nascent democracy. Because, it is prone to ethnic domineering and unequal distribution of dividends of democracy.
Cite this paper
Olasunkanmi, A. (2019). Ethnic Identity and Constitutional Reprentative Governance in Nigeria. Open Access Library Journal, 6, e5487. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/oalib.1105487.
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