Securitisation of Ethnicity and Its Long-Term Conflict Consequences in Nigeria’s Federal System

This study develops an original theoretical analysis of how the securitisation of ethnic identity in Nigeria's federal governance architecture has produced long-term conflict consequences, examining evidence from the North Central, South East, and South West geopolitical zones over a thirty-year period from 1994 to 2024. Securitisation theory, as developed by the Copenhagen School, explains how actors elevate political issues to existential security threats requiring extraordinary measures; this study extends the theory to analyse how Nigeria's state actors and political entrepreneurs have securitised ethnicity as a governance strategy with predictable conflict-generating consequences. Employing a critical historical institutionalist methodology, the study analyses thirty years of federal policy documents, census and resource allocation debates, state creation history, and electoral data, complemented by 55 in-depth interviews with political historians, conflict scholars, and former government officials. The theoretical contribution is an original Nigerian Federal Securitisation Conflict Model, which traces the mechanism through which securitised ethnic politics, institutionalised in federal character principles, resource allocation formulas, and security sector composition, generates structural conflict incentives that outlast individual political episodes. Findings demonstrate that each major revision of federal power-sharing formulas since 1994 has predictably generated new conflict flashpoints in geopolitical zones perceived as losing relative power, confirming the model's causal mechanism claims. Recommendations include reforming federal character implementation to reduce zero-sum ethnic competition, developing conflict impact assessments for all major federal resource allocation decisions, and establishing a national political dialogue process to renegotiate contested elements of Nigeria's federal power-sharing architecture. Keywords: securitisation, ethnicity, federalism, Nigeria, conflict theory.