Identity, Cohesion, and Nigeria’s Security Question Amid Anthropogenic Pressures

Abstract

Group identity plays a major role in issues of security, from force integrity that fosters military cohesion and efficiency to genocide and racism that divide communities and states. Identity is a powerful force for peace, but it can also be a deadly tool for destruction. So how can states harness this force for good? And have anthropogenic pressures contributed to shaping identities, intensifying animosities, or building bridges across groups? In Nigeria, security issues have often been identity-driven, culminating in its civil war from 1967 to 1970. Although this is attributed to clandestine maneuvers for control of the nation’s oil wealth, the quest for identity domination was at the heart of the war. Half a century later, the same identity domination crisis brings the country to the brink of fragmentation. This paper links the events that led to the civil war to current events, and it advocates that leaders should learn from history the painful lesson that a state will remain unstable—even after a war is comprehensively won—if state-sponsored horizontal inequality dominates the political space. This chapter concludes that the country has everything to gain from forging horizontal equality. Historical research design and social analysis served as the methodological foundation of this paper.