Minorities and the State in Africa By Michael U. Mbanaso and Chi ...

so has made no attempt to address it through frank dialogue. Instead, it has employed Machiavellian tactics to suppress it, which has been counterproductive. Consequently, the Anglophone problem has gained much momentum in the last decade, leading to the development of separatist tendencies. After unsuccessful attempts to galvanize outside support through several petitions to the British government, the Commonwealth, the United Nations, and the African Court in Banjul, Anglophone activists took a more radical position. From their initial clamor for recognition of their distinct identity within the Cameroon polity, they formed a separatist movement called Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC). This movement is seeking secession and has even gone ahead to declare the independence of Anglophone Cameroon from the rest of the republic.

The next two contributions in this volume portray the complexities of the multiethnic states created during colonialism. Although emerging from different historical experiences from the previous case studies, R. T. Akinyele and J. Shola Omotola trace the historical trajectory of minority problems focusing on Nigeria, which is arguably one of the world's most ethnically diverse countries in the world today. Countries like Nigeria have been bedeviled by minority problems since their inception. The multiple dimensions of Nigeria's minority problems make it even more complex than other countries in Africa. Besides the ethno-linguistic and religious dimensions, Nigeria's minority problems, according to Eghosa E. Osaghae, stem from “the anomalous structuring of the federation at the beginning.”¹⁸ Osaghae asserts that “contrary to what some authors proffer, ethnic minorities in Nigeria are not simply numerically inferior linguistic groups,”¹⁹ and that the “ethnic minorities problem is not a function of the objective existence of major and minor groups, but of the dynamic subjective interactions which follow the objective differentiation.”²⁰

The complexities the multi-ethnic nations-states created by colonialism in Nigeria is further examined by J. Shola Omotola in this volume. Since inception, the Nigerian federation consists of three dominant groups—Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba—with numerous minorities. The paper