Internal Conflict, Ethnic Violence and Human Welfare in Nigeria

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume IV, Issue II, February 2020 | ISSN 2454–6186

Internal Conflict, Ethnic Violence and Human Welfare in Nigeria

Olofin Olabode Philip
 Faculty of Social Sciences, Dept. Of Economics, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria

Abstract: Given the global concerns on the level of damages that conflicts inflict on the world economies, we examine the consequences of internal conflict (intconf) and ethnic violence (ethviol) on human welfare in Nigeria. We consider variables such as socioeconomic condition (condt), foreign direct investment (fdi), gross capital formation (gcf), agricultural value added (agva), technical cooperation grant (tecop) economic opportunity (ecopt) and agricultural machinery tractor (agcap) as important variables that are germane to the promotion of human welfare in Nigeria. We measure human welfare with gross domestic per capita income (gdpkk) of the Nigerians. Data on intconf and ethviol were obtained from the publications of Country Risk Guide, while data on gdpkk, fdi, gcf, agva, tecop, agcap and ecopt were obtained from the publications of World Development Indicators. We generate ecopt from employment level, government spending on education, school enrolment and financial institutions using principal component analysis. These variables are important for creating economic opportunities for both the haves and have-nots. We use Ordinary Least Square (OLS) for the analysis.
Our results show that ethnic violence (ethviol), socioeconomic condition (condt)and foreigh direct investment (fdi) have negative relationship with human welfare. These results were not statistically significant. These results suggest their impact is minimal. We also found that intconf, gcf, hc, tecop, ecopt and agcap promoted human welfare. These results were statistically significant except gcf, hc and agcap. The results suggest that focusing more attention on improving on these variables may likely promote human welfare in Nigeria. The positive relation between internal conflict and human welfare may not be surprising in the sense that, government is usually quick in responding to the agitation of people by providing palliative measure whenever there is internal conflict in contrast to ethnic violence. The results of the study show that ethnic violence and internal conflict respond differently to human welfare. For a country characterized by multiple ethnics like Nigeria where socioeconomic conditions and economic opportunity are largely unequal, it is expected that internal conflict might exert more disruptions to the countrythan ethnic violence.

Keywords: Internal conflicts; Ethnic violence; Socio-economic conditions; Economic opportunities; Human welfare; Nigeria.

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