Citizens-Indigenes and Settlers Dichotomy as Promoted by Government: Causes and Implications on Public Organizations

Abstract

The crises associated with Citizens-Indigenes and Settlers dichotomy (C-ISD) in Nigeria has been on the increase. Governments’ actions and or inactions often exacerbate the age-long social relationship amongst people that have lived together for years, a tendency that reflect in many aspects of the people’s lives, including Public Organizations (POs) established to provide basic services to the people. Recently, where superiority of the concepts is experimented, government’s meddlesomeness has led to the low performance of such organizations. The general causes and consequences of this ugly practice on POs need to be identified in other that the constitution will address them. By using an eclectic approach for data generation and analysis with field works in two states that were purposively/regionally selected within North and South regions in Nigeria, this paper identified the causes, consequences and how government promoted the dichotomy in Public Organizations in Nigeria. We further employed documentary method for data collation while content analysis and narrative analytical technique were adopted. Given that issues relating C-ISD is one of the key problems that work against output performance POs, we recommend that the 1999 Constitution be amended immediately, perpetrators of the dichotomy be punished and that the federal character principle be replaced with more robust ideas that would make POs productive.