The Phenomenon of Ethic Minorities' Nationalism in Nigeria with Special Focus on the Niger Delta People

The restructure or amalgamation in 1914 witnessed largely the bringing together of two Nigeria’s notably the Northern and Southern Protectorates. This was followed by further balkanization into three regions of North, West and East respectively in 1939, to basically quench the nationalists’ agitation to be included in the legislative process, the Richard’s Constitution of 1946 was introduced, bringing the whole of Nigeria into a single legislative agenda. The irony of this development the paper contend is that, it breeds and cross-fertilized cultural groupings that later metamorphosed into political parties with a phenomenon referred to as ethnic majority and minority groups, in the various regions. It is therefore the argument that, the nationalists were fighting for the liberation and ascendancy of the majority ethnic groups at the expense of the minorities, that gave rise to the cut-throat competition among ethnically formed parties with the pretension of fighting for the emancipation of Nigeria. This exercise was well perfected by the Lyttleton Constitution of 1954 built on the regionalism principle that made the regional assemblies autonomous as well as their characterization of federating units. This episode, however, fanned the embers of ethnic nationalism, and became the turning point in the history of ethnic minorities’ generally and the Niger Delta peoples in particular. It was believed there existed some form of homogeneity in the regions. However, using the historical analysis approach to x – ray the findings shows that, the aggressive promotion of ethnic nationalism on the part of the ethnic majors and their ethnically based parties was the contradiction that made the minorities’ to recognized that their interests were not taken into account of the regions in which they were compressed into. And the expression of this fear of their being subsumed culturally and politically within the regional structure climaxed the calls for separate regions or states, among others for survival has marked this process in contemporary vocabulary as minorities’ ethnic nationalism in Nigeria’s spectrum.