Endless Circle of Self-Determination Rumbling: When the Stick-and-Carrot Strategy Fails, Is Nigeria’s Collective Journey Still Non-Negotiable?
Abstract – Agitation for self-determination is as old as the Nigerian State. On a large scale, it has led to a civil war, and subsequently, a pocket of ethnic insurgencies across all regions of the federation. The Federal Government strategy has often been oscillating between wielding the stick of force through military engagement in combating the often militant agitators and pacifying them at other time with a round-table carrot via monetary inducement, contract awards or superficial bogus amnesty package. These strategies have always served an interim purpose because the gamut of trigger-root causes for further agitation has not been fundamentally…