Media, Ethnicity and the Challenge of Peace: Exploring the Crisis of State-Building in Nigeria

Abstract

Nigeria is purportedly at peace, yet, it is perennially embroiled in skirmishes that threaten its geo-stability. At the base of this dilemma is the mutational interface of religion and ethnicity in motorizing tension. The Nigerian media is not enamoured of the undercurrents that flow from this interaction. Rather, it is sucked into its centrifugal fold as it plays dialectic roles both as advocate of unity and champion of sectional interest in the country’s struggle to erect a cohesive national structure that is superior to ethno-religious allegiances. Thus, this paper examines the contradictions of state-building in Nigeria, the attendant elite deployment of primordial forces that are antithetical to peace and contends that the solution to the jigsaw puzzle of conflicts lies in the reinvention of the media to rise above the narrow boundaries of interethnic fusion erected by media-owning elite. Keywords: Peace, state-building, nation-building, ethnicity, skewed federalism

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