Interrogating Citizens’ Inequality and Its Impact on Development in Nigeria’s Democratic Experience (1999-2019): Imperatives for Leadership Re-Orientation and Resilience

Abstract

Nigeria's democratic experience since 1999 has witnessed poor dividends in terms of developmental strides owing essentially to lack-lustre leadership which has resulted in cries of inequality and marginalization. Thus, ethnic militias, tribal conflicts, threats to nationhood, secessionist agitations, etc pervades the Nigerian landscape. In this paper, secondary source of data and content analysis were relied on. The paper opines that the cumulative negative effects of these tendencies on national cohesion and development leave much to be desired. Using Conflict theories of Social Inequality, the paper further opines that one major development challenge confronting Nigeria is the glaring absence of national cohesion and integration which has earned her the appellation of being a mere geographical expression and not a nation. This has been attributed to leadership incompetence that has failed to address emergent leadership cum developmental issues and peculiarities of the federating nationalities. Thus, the ethnic nationalities clamour to hold on to power at the central and be at the commanding heights of political control, resource allocation and disposition, while the minority ethnic nationalities suffer inequality and development is undermined. Hence the calls for self-determination and re-structuring of the country. Interestingly, leadership response overtime is one characterized by absence of theoretical rigour and direction. This paper sought to interrogate the challenges of widening citizens' inequality, marginalization and rights violation, and its nexus with human development on the one hand, while advocating leadership re-orientation and indeed resilience as adequate mechanism for engendering a crop of citizenry who can participate equitably in nation-building and development.

Keywords: Democratic, Leadership, Development, Inequality, Resilience.

DOI: 10.7176/DCS/10-10-04

Publication date:October 31^st 2020