Building Ethnic Tolerance and National Unity in Nigeria’s National Youth Service

• In Event: Promoting Peace and Democratic Stability in Divided African Societies

Abstract

Can governments successfully socialize citizens into greater inter-ethnic tolerance and national identification? Several countries invest in national service programs designed to immerse youth in subnational cultures other than their own, and instill in them the importance of national unity. But whether and how these programs actually change attitudes, social norms, and identities remains unclear. To address this question, I present results from an original, longitudinal survey of participants in Nigeria’s National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). The NYSC requires all educated Nigerians to attend a camp and work for a year in a region outside their home state – forcing them to engage them in cultural immersion, inter-group contact, and diversity programming. Studies of similar nation-building and prejudice reduction programs typically face selection issues, and rarely have the opportunity to directly compare different interventions. The NYSC’s policy of randomizing assignment to both orientation camps and year-long workplaces – which vary in the degree and type of diversity programming and inter-ethnic contact they expose participants to – provide a natural experiment set-up to overcome these issues. Using a difference-in-differences set-up, I find that youth service participants do develop more tolerant and nationally minded attitudes, and are more likely to reject secession. However, exposure to the NYSC’s messages and symbols about national unity and cultural tolerance may be the main drivers of these effects, rather than inter-ethnic contact and cultural immersion.

Author

• Narrelle Gilchrist, Princeton University