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Paper short abstract:

Nigeria's Democratic Experience has witnessed developmental strides owing to inept leadership resulting in cries of inequality, ethnic militia and threat to nationhood. While relying on secondary sources of data and Conflict Theories of Social Inequality, the paper advocates leadership reorientation

Paper long abstract:

Nigeria's democratic experience since 1999 has witnessed poor dividends in terms of developmental strides owing essentially to lack-lustre leadership which has resulted in cries of inequality and marginalization. Thus ,ethnic militias, tribal conflicts, threats to nationhood, secessionist agitations, etc pervades the Nigerian landscape. In this paper, the secondary sources of data and content analysis were relied on. The paper opines that the cumulative negative effects of these tendencies on national cohesion and development leave much to be desired. Using Conflict theories of Social Inequality, the paper further opines that one major development challenge confronting Nigeria is the glaring absence of national cohesion and integration in consonant with the aeration that Nigeria. mere geographical expression.. This has been attributed to leadership incompetence that has failed to address emergent leadership cum developmental issues and peculiarities of the federating nationalities. Hence, the ethnic nationalities clamour to hold on to power at the central and hence be at the commanding heights of political control, resource allocation and disposition, while the minority ethnic nationalities suffer inequality and development I undermined. Hence the calls for self-determination, re-structuring . Interestingly, leadership response overtime is one characterized by absence of theoretical rigour and direction. This paper sought to interrogate the challenges of widening citizens' inequality, marginalization and rights violation, and its nexus with human development on the other hand, while advocating leadership re-orientation and indeed resilience as adequate mechanism for engendering a crop of citizenry that can participate equitably in nation-building and development.

Keywords: Democratic, Leadership, Development, Inequality, Resilience.