ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: THE ROOTS OF POLITICAL INSTABILITY AMONGST INDIGENOUS NATIONALITIES AND IN THE ‘NIGERIAN ’ SUPRA-NATIONAL STATE, 1884- 1990: A LONGITUDINAL AND COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL STUDY

The ‘Nigerian ’ supra-national state was built by British colonialism in West Africa’s Niger basin. Its supra-national status derives from its multi-national composition. It attracts the attention of scholars who want to account for its continuing poor political performance. Our inquiry into the roots of its continuing poor political performance was conducted from the perspectives of Harry Eckstein’s congruence theory and the derivative framework from it that we called the E-G scheme. We found a high degree of social, economic, and political heterogeneity amongst the diverse nationalities that were compelled to constitute it. In the three nationalities— the Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa-Fulani—that we sampled, that heterogeneity is evident in their governmental and non-governmental authority patterns. We found that the British formulated and implemented state building policies that preferentially favored the Hausa-Fulani but not the Igbo, the Yoruba, and others. We found that the British were impressed by the inherent autocratic traits of the Hausa-Fulani, but not the obviously democratic traits of the indigenous Igbo, and Yoruba authority patterns. Thus, while there emerged tremendous resemblances between the authority patterns of the ‘Nigerian