ABSTRACT
Conflicts of various kinds in Nigeria have often been attributed to ethnicity. For instance, communal clashes, electoral violence and so on have all been rooted in ethnicity. However, there is an indirect relationship between, say, inter-party competition and ethnicity. What intervenes between ethnicity as independent variable and conflict as a dependent variable is the patrimonial character of the Nigerian state. Patrimonialism emphasizes personal and clientelist rule in which state officers dispense resources to clients in exchange for loyalty and services. The ease with which state offices are personalized, commoditized and commercialized increases their stakes. This calls for utilization of all imaginable strategies including mobilization of ethnic solidarity by political elites. Ethnic acrimony engendered by one instance of mobilization keeps recurring in other instances to entrench inter-ethnic conflict.
