Nationhood and Statehood: The Impact of a Conflated Discourse on African Polities and their Non-Dominant Ethnic Groups

Abstract

It is now conventional to refer to post-colonial African polities as ‘nations’ or ‘nation-states’. However, in this article I argue that the conflation of nationhood and statehood has led to the violation of the rights of non-dominant ethnic groups to meaningful political participation, equitable economic opportunities, ethnic identity, and secession. Thus this conflation leads to an on-going lack of legitimacy in postcolonial African states, thereby exposing them to perpetual neocolonial domination.