Minority Rights and the National Question in Nigeria [Hardcover]

This book offers a thematic study of key debates in the history of the ethnic politics, democratic governance, and minority rights in Nigeria. Nigeria provides a framework for examining the central paradox in post-colonial nation building projects in Africa  the tension between majority rule and minority rights. The liberal democratic model on which most African states were founded at independence from colonial rule, and to which they continue to aspire, is founded on majority rule. It is also founded on the protection of the rights of minority groups to political participation, social inclusion and economic resources. Maintaining this tenuous balance between majority rule and minority rights has, in the decades since independence, become the key national question in many African countries, perhaps none more so than Nigeria. This volume explores these issues, focusing on four key themes as they relate to minority rights in Nigeria: ethnic and religious identities, nationalism and federalism, political crises and armed conflicts. 

1. Introduction: Minorities and the National Question in Nigeria
I. Minorities, Colonialism and Decolonization
2. Decolonization and the Minority Question in Nigeria: The Willink Commission Revisited
3. Historicizing Ethnic Groups Movements and State Creation in Nigeria, 1947-1967
4. Minority Groups: Bridgeheads in Nigerian Politics, 1950s  1966

II. Minorities and Postcolonial Politics

5. The Owegbe Cult: Political and Ethnic Rivalries in Early Post-Colonial Benin City

6. Midwest Regions Non-Igbo Minorities Responses to Biafran Occupation and Federal Liberation in the Nigerian Civil War, 1967-1970

7. Ethnicity, War and Military Politics in Nigeria

III. Minorities and Contemporary Nation-Building

8. Willinks Report, NigerlC(