An Original Theoretical Contribution to the Sociology of Ethnic Conflict: The Relational Grievance Model Applied to North Central Nigeria

Existing theoretical accounts of ethnic conflict in Nigeria oscillate between structural grievance models that overpredict conflict and elite manipulation theories that underweight popular mobilisation dynamics. This doctoral study develops an original relational grievance model that theorises ethnic conflict as emerging from the intersection of objective structural inequities, socially constructed and narratively transmitted grievance memories, and the relational dynamics between ethnic group organisations. The model is built from original empirical foundations gathered through three years of fieldwork in Plateau and Benue States, combining community-level conflict history documentation with 88 in-depth interviews, analysis of ethnic group institutional records, and social network mapping of inter-ethnic organisational relationships. The relational grievance model identifies three theoretical mechanisms absent from existing frameworks: grievance narrative institutionalisation in ethnic community organisations, relational threat amplification through parallel ethnic institution building, and periodic grievance activation by internal ethnic elite competition that redirects anger outward. Unlike instrumentalist theories, the model accounts for both spontaneous and organised ethnic violence episodes while also explaining periods of inter-ethnic coexistence under unchanged structural conditions, which existing theories cannot explain simultaneously. The framework is validated against three historical ethnic conflict episodes in the study region and offers predictive and preventive propositions testable in future research. The doctoral contribution advances comparative ethnic conflict theory through an original model grounded in Nigerian empirical realities that is applicable to similar plural societies in West Africa. Keywords: ethnic conflict theory, relational grievance, North Central Nigeria, plural society, conflict sociology.