IJPSD

ISSN: 2360-784X

 International Journal of Political Science and Development
 

International Journal of Political Science and Development

Vol. 8(1), pp. 1-14, January, 2020. 

DOI: 10.14662/IJPSD2020.010

ISSN: 2360-784X

Review

Identity Crises and National Development in Africa: An Exploratory Example of Nigeria and Sudan

¹Akinyetun, Tope Shola and ²Bakare, Kola Muheeb

¹ Political Science Department, Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education, Otto/Ijanikin, Lagos State, Nigeria.

Corresponding author’s E-mail: akinyetuntope@gmail.com; +2348025355543

² Political Science and Public Administration Department, Babcock University, Ilishan, Remo, Ogun State, Nigeria.

Email: kolabakare101@gmail.com; +2348027791053

Accepted 2 February 2020

Many African countries are made up of multiethnic, multi-religious, multi-lingual, and multi-cultural groups who have failed to exploit their diversity to further the interest of the State. Instead, these States have been characterized by conflict, violence, violent conflict, ethnic cleansing, communal clashes, ethnic militia, separatists, rebels and insurgent groups exhibiting anti-State activities that have repeatedly thwarted efforts made at development. Nigeria is a volatile State that is highly responsive to primordial identities which has seen the politics of the country played along the same line, i.e. the major ethnic groups are Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba who are majorly distributed according to religious alignments and each struggling for dominance, albeit at the expense of national cohesion or development while Sudan is a country widely partitioned by racial, religious and regional sentiments. Sudan is torn on regional North-South divide, racial African-Arab divide and subnational Northern and Southern nationalism-divide. Of course, this has strained development in these States because protracted and widespread violent conflicts leads to devastating economic crisis just as identity-related crises leads to interruption of economic transactions, alteration of resource allocation by the state, pulling down of human and physical capital as well as amplified cost of carrying out transactions. This paper sought to explore how identity crises has become exacerbated to the detriment of national development in Africa, with particular reference to Nigeria and Sudan whilst concluding that the antagonistic nature of interaction in these states does not allow for development to thrive.

Keywords: Nigeria, Sudan, Identity, Crises, development

Cite this article as: Akinyetun, TS., Bakare, KM (2020). Identity Crises and National Development in Africa: An Exploratory Example of Nigeria and Sudan. Int. J. Polit. Sci. Develop. 8(1) 1-14