The Task of Nation–Building in Nigeria: A Collective Responsibility

Abstract

After series of verbal battles between the nationalists and the British officials, Nigeria finally emerged from the yoke of colonialism and became a sovereign nation within the Commonwealth of Nations on the 1st October, 1960. After political independence, the task of nation-building was supposed to be of paramount issue in the minds of the political leaders and followers but what one observed was what can be termed as “power struggle” based on ethnic divide and massive electoral malpractice and/or fraud. The attendant consequences were political riots, impunity, unhealthy rivalry, deepened ethnic animosity, civil war, corruption, hunger, poverty, instability and under-development. The thrust of this paper, therefore is to examine some of these problems in nation- building in Nigeria with the aim of making suggestions which will serve as panacea to the problems earlier identified. It is hoped that if these suggestions are adequately put into practice, Nigeria will leave her present state of political backwardness and move towards the path of honour, growth, development and modernization. This work depends mainly on qualitative methodology and social contract theory as its theoretical framework. Keywords: Task, Nation–Building, Nigeria, Collective Responsibility Journal Reference Format: Ibitoye, M.O., Ajayi, P.O. & Adu, A.M. (2023): The Task of Nation–Building in Nigeria: A Collective Responsibility. Humanities, Management, Arts, Education & the Social Sciences Journal. Vol. 11. No. 2, Pp 33-44 www.isteams.net/humanitiesjournal. dx.doi.org/10.22624/AIMS/HUMANITIES/V11N2P4