Hanging in the Balance: Interplay of Forces and the Resilience of Nigerian State

Abstract

Nigeria remains one of the most written-about countries in the world. This owes in part to its central place as the country with the highest concentration of black people in the world; the most populous in Africa; importantly a crisis-ridden entity that continually dominate world headlines. Its 53 years post-independence existence has witnessed a number of challenges many of which are life-threatening. Indeed the general opinion is not whether Nigeria will take the final plunge but when. But so far, Nigeria remains standing and the longest surviving federation in the continent. In an attempt to understand its survival ability in the face of life-threatening challenges, this paper identities the interplay of centrifugal and centripetal forces operating at opposing realms as major frame of analysis. It argues that forces pulling Nigeria apart and those pulling it together are almost equal. What are these forces and how do they operate? What are the empirical instances? This study seeks to interrogate these posers.