Secessionists Agitation, Identity Politics and Social Justice in Nigeria

One of the prominent characteristics of contemporary politics in Nigeria has been a growing recognition of the significance of cultural differences, which often portrayed as “conflict identities” “identity politics or “politics of differences”. The aim of this study is assess the impact of the identity politics and secessionists’ quest for social justice on the current democratic dispensation. Moreover, data for this study were mainly collected from secondary sources such as textbooks, newspapers, magazines, journals and internet materials among others. The data collected were content analysed. This study is situated within the context of the National Self-Determination Theory. This study argues that many of these conflicts in Nigeria’s fourth republic are rooted in age -long dissatisfaction and discontents against successive government policies and actions by the masses across the country. This has remained unabated as there are pockets of resistance and criticism against the structural imbalance of Nigeria’s federalism since independence, controversial revenue sharing formula, ethnicity and ethnic politics, religious intolerance and violence, human rights abuse. All these have resulted to agitation for resource control, complaints of political marginalization, demand for power shift and rotational presidency, etc. Many of these agitations remained unresolved till today.