Ethnic Politics, Distributive Justice, and Local Government Resource Allocation in Nigeria’s Middle Belt: An Original Framework

This dissertation develops an original theoretical framework for understanding how ethnic politics mediates local government resource allocation decisions and their implications for distributive justice among competing ethnic communities in Nigeria's Middle Belt, covering Plateau, Benue, and Taraba States. The Middle Belt is Nigeria's most ethnically diverse region, hosting hundreds of distinct ethnic groups whose competitive claims over development resources, land, political representation, and identity recognition create a uniquely complex local governance environment. Existing theories of ethnic politics and distributive justice, developed primarily in contexts of larger, more institutionalized ethnic groups, inadequately capture the micro-level dynamics of resource competition among the Middle Belt's numerous smaller ethnic communities. Employing an original Ethnic Distributive Politics Framework built on Political Economy Theory, the Social Identity Model, and Spatial Justice Theory, this study applies a mixed methods design combining three hundred structured surveys, sixty in-depth interviews, spatial analysis of development project location data, and network analysis of local government council composition across fifteen local government areas. Secondary data includes government project databases, council budget documents, and comparative literature on ethnic conflict and resource distribution in Sub-Saharan Africa. The study's original contribution lies in producing a replicable Ethnic Distributive Justice Index for local government resource allocation and testing its predictive validity against development outcome and conflict incidence data. Findings are expected to demonstrate that ethnicized resource allocation significantly increases inter-community conflict risk while reducing overall development efficiency. Keywords: Ethnic politics, distributive justice, local government, Middle Belt Nigeria, resource allocation.