Paper short abstract:

The Yoruba are desirous of political autonomy within a Nigeria that is intolerant of autonomy for the component units. This triggered a proposal for separation by an irredentist Yoruba group, and a confrontational reaction from the Nigerian government. How does this impact the future of the Yoruba?

Paper long abstract:

The current composition of Nigeria is undergoing strains and stresses that are triggered by the fissiparous demands of the ethnic groups, particularly the Yoruba and Igbo ethnic groups. The Yoruba ethnic group lays claims to being marginalised in the current geo-political arrangement in Nigeria, and this has prompted an irredentist group to propose a separatist agenda. The separatist agenda is gaining traction because of a collective feeling of optimism about Yoruba advancement in their own independent territory, without the burden of association with Nigeria. This research will attempt to provide answers to the following questions; 1. What are the remote and immediate causes of the Yoruba ethnic group’s secessionist agenda? 2. Are there possibilities of achieving the Yoruba ethnic group’s secessionist agenda? 3. What are the options for the political future of the Yoruba ethnic group? For this purpose, the Theory of Ethnicity, with its three critical approaches; primordialist, instrumentalist, and constructionist, will be applied for exploratory purposes. The utility of combining the three approaches is embedded in their mutually reinforcing features in projecting the fundamental basis of the secessionist agitation of the Yoruba ethnic group. The research would be conducted with qualitative methodology and the adoption of historical and descriptive approaches to articulate the problematic. Instructively, the historical approach would enrich the primordial theoretical approach, while the descriptive approach would benefit both the instrumentalist and constructionist theoretical approaches. The findings will expose how the nature of the Nigerian state will interject the political future of the Yoruba ethnic group.