THE PRECEDENT AND PROSPECT OF GRAND COALITION IN NIGERIA
Keywords:
Abstract
Nigeria is country with a population of over 170million people extracted from over 370 different ethnic groups. These ethnic groups are mainly Muslims and Christians with a minority traditionalist who constitutes about 50%, 40% and 10% of the country’s total population respectively. The country is divided into 36 states and the federal capital territory (FCT), 6 geo-political zones and 2 regions of the north and south. Constitutionally, each state of the federation must have atleast 1 minister in the federal cabinet. However, the ethnicity or religion of prospective ministers is not accorded any signifinace. This system therefore creates a feeling of marginalisation and domination especially from the minority ethnic groups and religious imbalance of the cabinet. With such feelings, it became imperative to find out what exactly are the considerations of the government in the appointment of minister in such a divided country like Nigeria and how it impacted on the people. The objective is to suggest on a more comprehensive all inclusive ministerial selection criteria across the country. To achieve this objective, a semi-structured one-on-oneindepthinterview was conducted on 15 respondents who are critical to the research area. The findings revealed that grand coalition being one of the characteristics of consociational democracy looks appealing where by the most critical cleavages in the country which are religion and ethnicity could be considered in the appointment of ministers and also has the capacity to alleviate if not eliminate the feelings of marginalisation and domination expressed across the country.
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