Representative Bureaucracy in Nigeria: Influence on Nation Building, 2004-2014

Abstract Nigeria as a heterogeneous society consists of different people with various ancestral origins, languages, and cultures. It is therefore imperative to guarantee equity, justice and fairness in the allocation and distribution of resources, wealth and positions to the various ethnic groups in order to keep Nigeria as a single entity. There had been conflicts among different ethnic groups as a result of marginalization in resource sharing. This study therefore investigated the effect of representative bureaucracy in guaranteeing equity and fairness in the distribution of national cake among these ethnic groups. Four research questions and four objectives guided this study. The general objective of the study was to investigate whether representative bureaucracy in Nigeria had positive influence on nation building. The specific objectives were: to examine the factors responsible for conflicts among the ethnic groups in Nigeria, to ascertain the extent to which representative bureaucracy had solved the problems of conflict and encouraged nation building in Nigeria, to assess the negative influences of representative bureaucracy on nation building in Nigeria, and suggest remedies to the negative influences of representative bureaucracy on nation building in Nigeria. A total of one hundred and seventy respondents were used for the study. The data used in this study were collected through both primary and secondary sources.Yaro Yamani sampling technique was used to determine the sampling size and a total of one hundred and seventy respondents were used in the study. The researcher used four research hypotheses to analyze the data. Simple percentages were used to test the research questions while Chi-Square was used to test the hypotheses. Some findings of the study include that marginalization in employment into the federal civil service was responsible for conflicts among the ethnic groups in Nigeria, representative bureaucracy provides the modalities and schemes for redressing imbalances in Nigerian civil service, that representative bureaucracy did not promote ethnicity but encouraged nation building in Nigeria, merit should not constitute a weighty consideration even in seeking to achieve-geo-political balancing on recruitment in Nigerian civil service. The study made some recommendations which include among others; that there should be functional mechanism for the effective implementation of federal character and quota system in Nigeria civil service, this would help to reduce frequent conflicts among ethnic groups and staff of the civil service should be trained on the job because representative bureaucracy tends to neglect merit and professionalism.