onduct impacts the administrative conduct of Nigerian government. The nation is described by extraordinary ethnic polarization and strife. It has been contended that bury ethnic contention for mastery is a lethal torment’ of the Nigerian political process (Afigbo, 1989, 4). In any case, how has ethnic assembly and showdown showed itself in the multi ethnic setting in Nigeria? The evaluated populace of Nigeria in 2001 is 11.6.6 billion (FRN, 2001, 123), making the nation the most crowded in Africa. The humanist, Onigu Otite, has given a rundown of 374 ethnic gatherings (Otitle, 1990).
There is a basic understanding, however that these ethnic gatherings are comprehensively isolated into ethnic ‘minorities’. The numerically and politically-significant ethnic gatherings are the composite Hausa-Fulani of the North, the Yoruba of the Southeast, and the Igbo of the Southeast. These three ‘hegemonic’ ethnic gatherings are appropriately alluded to by the non-specific term ‘Wazobia’. Focuses of huge populace fixation coincide with the homeland of these three dominant part ethnic gatherings who constituted 57.8% of the national populace in the 1963 evaluation (Afolayan, 19778; 147&155). That enumeration has the Hausa at 11,653,000 (20.9%), the Yoruba at 11,321,00 (20.3%) , and the Igbo at 9,246,00 (16.6%) (Jibril, 1991, 111). The various ethnicities like the Ijaw, Kanuri, Edo, Ibibio, Nupe, and the Tiv. Eleven of such substantial minorities constituted 27.9% of the populace. (Afolayan, 1978;155).

The level of every ethnic gathering in the national populace is that of exceptional political contestation, especially among the dominant part gatherings and a portion of the huge minorities. The figures propose that the three greater part bunches constituted around 51.61 percent of the national populace in 1952/3. This predominance is complemented by the tripodal territorial regulatory set-up of that period. In the Northern Locale, the Hausa constituted 32.6 percent of the populace. At the point when the united Fulani is incorporated, the figure ascends to 50.6 percent. In the Western District, the Yoruba constituted 70.8 percent of the populace, while in the Eastern Area, the Igbo constituted 61 percent of the populace. Buttressing this statistic conveyance were pioneer discernments that ‘Nigeria falls normally into three areas, the North, the West and the East’ (Governor Arthur Richards, referred to in Oyovbaire, 1983, 8). There is in this way the numerical and political dominance of the three larger part ethnic gatherings, in their particular district