NATIONALITIES QUESTION SOCIAL CHANGE PROPOSAL TO PREEMPT AMERICAN DOOMSDAY FOR NIGERIA

Abstract

Recently, the United States of America’s State Department predicted a cataclysmic doomsday for Nigeria within two decades owing to some apparent trends of socio-political events in the country. This is against the backdrop of recurrent demand for a Conference of Ethnic Nationalities in Nigeria a demand that is eternally reinforced by the circumstances of the birth of what is today known as Nigeria. This article therefore critically reappraises the Nationalities/ national Question in Nigeria, and proposes that a properly structured Nationalities Conference in present day Nigeria would not only solve the country’s apparently intractable Nationalities/National Question but engender broad-based social change that would have implications of social, political, economic, and religious dimensions in the short and long run, and ultimately preempt the doomsday that the Americans have foreseen for Nigeria. Relying on a study of the patterns created by other countries with similar characteristics as Nigeria, but who have successfully enacted such conferences, and an understanding of the radical and conservative models for social change, the article also proposes a perspective towards actualizing the conferences without the usually feared hitches.