The Ethnic Trap: Notes on the Nigerian Campaign and Elections, 1978–79

Abstract

In his opening address to the fifty members of the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) on 18 October, 1975, the head of Nigeria’s new military government, General Murtala Ramat Muhammed, declared: “It is important that we avoid a reopening of the deep splits which caused trauma in the country.” Those splits, as was made known to the outside world during the civil war, were ethnic, regional, and, to a lesser extent, religious in nature. Of these three modes of overt division, Nigerians have always been most successful in controlling the religious aspect. General Murtala’s statement is instructive on the problem of regional splits: “The fear of the predominance of one Region over another has . . . been removed to a large extent by the simple Constitutional Act of creating more States.” Four months later, following the assassination of Murtala, the successor regime of General Obasanjo declared the creation of seven more states, bringing the number up to nineteen from the twelve established by General Gowon in May 1967. While it is evident that the existence of “regions” has not been obliterated by their subdivision into states, this development has reduced the immediate political visibility and at least some of the salience of regional boundaries.