Leila Demarest, Associate Professor, Institute of Political Science, Leiden University, Arnim Langer, Professor, KU Leuven
Lagos State, with an estimated population of 20 million, is Africa’s largest metropolis. Home to Nigeria’s commercial capital, it is a magnet for internal migration, drawing in a mix of the country’s ethnic groups. Nigeria is estimated to have between 150 and 500 distinct ethnic groups, many of which are represented in Lagos.
The original inhabitants of Lagos were Yoruba. As the colonial capital, the city experienced early migration from the Igbo group from the south-east. The Hausa-Fulani, from the north, are another important group to have been drawn to Lagos. More recent migration to the city has also been caused by insecurity in the north of Nigeria.
The social interactions between people from diverse backgrounds have been studied extensively as dynamics of exclusion are often pervasive in developed and developing societies alike. In multi-ethnic societies in Africa where there has been violent conflict, the question of peaceful coexistence is all the more important.
In Nigeria, past ethno-religious violence has led to massive casualties. The 1960s Biafra war and lethal riots in Kaduna and Jos in recent decades stand out. Lesser tensions are also present in Lagos state around competition for jobs and access to political power.
Intergroup tensions in Lagos may give rise to concerns about the risk of more serious threats.
But do we see this in adolescents, who haven’t yet started competing with each other for jobs and resources? In schools, young people generally have equal status, common goals, intergroup cooperation, and potential for friendship. Could new generations overcome the adversarial past?
We have decades of research between us straddling group behaviour and identity formation, peace and conflict dynamics, and ethnicity and religion in sub-Saharan Africa. For our research we aimed to gain a picture of intergroup dynamics among Lagos adolescents.
We concluded from surveying young people that higher diversity levels encourage more friendships and cross-group political discussions, which lead to positive relations between ethnic groups. But waiting for this to happen naturally may not be the best approach. It may leave smaller minority groups exposed to discrimination in the meantime. Policy interventions may encourage a quicker development of positive relations.
Survey of Lagos adolescents
Nigeria has a large youth population. Half of the people who live in Lagos state are younger than 25. That could have an important impact on future developments in the city, including intergroup relations.
In 2019, we surveyed final year secondary school students in 36 schools across the state to find out how they viewed other societal groups and which factors affected their views. Most previous research on intergroup relations has focused on adults.
We aimed to obtain a sample of Lagos adolescents who experienced diversity in their daily lives. To achieve this, we drew from both urban and rural districts. Our final sample contained 70?% Yoruba, 16?% Igbo, 2?% Hausa-Fulani, and 12?% other minority group adolescents.
We found that:
adolescents who reported more cross-group friendships had more positive attitudes, including higher trust, towards other groups
those exposed to political discussions in diverse contexts were more likely to hold positive attitudes towards other ethnic and religious groups
when youths experienced more diversity in their schools and neighbourhoods they were less likely to stereotype members of groups
they were also less likely to report a preference for their own group when it comes to teachers, future bosses, marriage partners and electoral candidates.
In contrast, youths exposed to political discussions in ethnic enclaves held negative views.
Diversity and contact
We used statistical analyses to investigate intergroup relations among our youth sample. We first asked whether there was a relationship between exposure to other groups and attitudes towards them. While urban areas, especially megacities like Lagos, are often characterised by diversity, many ethnic enclaves or homogeneous neighbourhoods exist.
We found that higher exposure to diversity had mixed effects. It was associated with less stereotyping and in-group preference, but also related to lower trust in others in general.
Mixed effects are not surprising, as scholars have long held that exposure to diversity does not really tell us how people actually relate to one another: what matters more is positive contact between individuals from different groups. Contact has been robustly associated with more positive intergroup attitudes in predominantly western-focused studies. In Africa-focused studies results have been mixed, with some finding positive and others no real impact of contact.
Our findings provide evidence for positive contact theory as adolescents with more cross-group friendships held more positive attitudes towards other groups and also had higher trust. This demonstrates actual positive contact is more important than mere exposure to diversity.
We also found that exposure to political narratives mattered. Youths who were exposed to political discussions in diverse contexts were more likely to hold positive attitudes towards other ethnic and religious groups.
Policy implications
Intergroup attitudes are formed at an early age. Once developed, prejudice or tolerance have a tendency to “stick” over time. Questions on the development of positive attitudes are in need of urgent attention in Africa because of the continent’s youthful populations and many African countries’ experiences with ethnic and religious conflict.
This brings us to the question of whether tolerance of others can be fast-tracked, especially at an early age, and when youth can be targeted through school interventions. Evidence from other (western) studies suggests that multicultural education, in which pupils are exposed to different cultures in the curriculum, cross-group class discussions on political themes, and cross-group school projects, may encourage positive intergroup relations.
These types of policies come with an important warning though. As we have seen during our field work, many schools, especially public schools, face large class sizes due to resource constraints and teacher training is minimal. Corporal punishment is still implemented. Group work and deliberation are difficult to manage with large numbers and a lack of training, and teachers also risk bringing their own prejudices to the classroom.
So it’s important to design interventions carefully and more research is needed to do this effectively in African contexts.
Leila Demarest received funding from the Leiden University Fund (grant reference W19304-5-01)
Arnim Langer receives funding from Research Foundation Flanders (FWO).
