Horizontal inequalities (HIs) are inequalities among groups with common felt cultural identities. These identities follow different lines across societies and across time. They include ethnic, religious, racial, or regional affiliations. HIs are multidimensional, including inequalities in access to political, economic and social resources, as well as in cultural recognition and status. Not only does unequal access to political, economic, and social resources and inequalities of cultural status have a serious negative impact on the welfare of members of poorer groups, but the presence of severe HIs, especially where consistent across dimensions and across salient group identities, has also been shown to increase the likelihood of the emergence of violent conflict in multiethnic societies. In this paper, we analyse and discuss the prevailing HIs in the three West African countries in which CRISE has done research for the past four years: Nigeria, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. In addition t...

In most of developing countries of the world, particularly in Nigeria, there is damaging magnitude of an increasing materials and economic gap within and among people, which has grossly differentiates the might of the few rich from the aspirations of the poor masses. The gross inequality and widespread of poverty in Nigeria have become pervasive as a result of government's failure to: adequately maintain a reasonable gap between the rich and the poor and failure to ensure a fair regulation and distribution of economic and political resources among the citizens. The government's failure have constituted a major source of great insecurity and tension which has continued to threatens national development and putting undue pressure on peaceful coexistence of Nigerian people. This study argues that, unless there are concerted strategies to curtail the manifestations of gross inequality and widespread of poverty, the inevitability of national disloyalty, resentment toward government initiatives and policy programmes, civil unrest, surge of youth militia groups, vandalism, kidnapping, drug/human trafficking, electoral violence and incessant increase in the number of insurgency groups among others vices will continue to hurt government developmental agenda in Nigeria.

The aim of this presentation is to generate some insights into the behaviour of the ethnic factor in the developmental experience of two African countries namely Nigeria and South Sudan, which have been regarded as failed states not due to their heterogenic configurations but due to the adverse effects of ethnicity. This paper reinforces the argument that political and social instability are the major causes of African underdevelopment, it posits that ethnicity encapsulates these factors using the cases of Nigeria and Sudan to offer germane examples of the hydra-headed effects of ethnicity. Since independence, the surge of inequality in Africa has been driven not by the revolution in technology but by ethnicity. Africa is also the continent with the highest rate of poverty, illiteracy, and infant mortality. As palliatives, several development and international financial aid programmes have tried to address the issues of poverty and underdevelopment in Africa, Asia and Latin America. While these programs yielded results in some parts of the world, they were almost a failure in Africa. Indeed, ethnicity remains a source of conflict used by nationalist and political entrepreneurs to promote their ambitions at the expense of Africa's development. This paper investigates the relationship between ethnicity and development, which are complex social constructs and argues that the independence obtained in the countries under study did not end their conflicts; rather, it retarded development. It further discusses the relationship between ethnicity and development and the dimensions on global inequalities. Generally, the paper gives the historical origins of ethnic problems, the primary forces contributing to their intensification in recent years, the various attempts made to mitigate it as well as the socioeconomic and political effects of the crises on development since independence.

The Nigerian federation is a marriage of over 400 ethnic nationalities whose consents were not sought in its formation. This fundamental flaw is further deepened by the fact that these ethnic groups have very striking differences ranging from language, population, level of education and geographical terrain which was not factored into the crafting of the Nigerian State. Expectedly, the politics and governance of the Nigerian State continues to be rudely punctuated by very disturbing ethnic and ethnic related crises that threaten its continued existence as a Nation. This paper attempts a chronicle and analysis of some of these crises and finds out among others that; ethnicity has remained the single most threatening trigger of crises in Nigeria and it is strongly supported by abject poverty which leaves a larger part of it citizenry grossly frustrated and easily swayed by opportunities to vent this frustration. Similarly, its implication for good governance and sustainable national d...