The Ontology of Race in Nigerian Ethnic Relations: A Critical Philosophical Inquiry into Ethnicity, Biology, and Social Construction

This study conducts a critical philosophical inquiry into the ontology of race and ethnicity in the Nigerian context, examining whether ethnic categories in Nigeria are biologically grounded, socially constructed, or some philosophically complex combination of the two, with implications for understanding interethnic conflict and national identity formation. The philosophy of race has generated important theoretical contributions from Charles Mills, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Linda Alcoff, but their application to the Nigerian ethnicity context is absent from the existing literature, constituting the gap this study addresses. A mixed-methods philosophical design is employed, combining systematic philosophical analysis of racial and ethnic ontology theories with a qualitative interview study involving 40 social anthropologists, ethnicity scholars, and philosophy academics across the six geopolitical zones. Discourse analysis of political party documents and ethnic advocacy materials from 2019 to 2024 supplements the interview data. Findings establish that Nigerian ethnic categories are philosophically best understood as social constructions with material consequences, because the biological differences invoked to justify ethnic boundaries do not correspond to meaningful genetic or phenotypic distinctions, yet the social reality of ethnic identity generates genuine power relations and distributional inequalities. The study contributes an original Nigerian application of racial ontology theory to the African philosophy and social philosophy literature. Keywords: racial ontology, ethnicity, social construction, Nigerian ethnic relations, philosophy of race.