Abstract:
The Nigerian State is in transition- evolving from pre-colonial through colonial to post-colonial acculturation. Meanwhile, state in Nigeria is fundamentally interventionist, overbearing and domineering. Again, the persistence of inchoate instruments of coercion largely predisposes the state to manipulation by parasitic dominant social forces who are surrogates to marketization predators. Thus, the tendency of these economic development soothsayers and melancholic technocrats to steer the ship of governance towards self- serving and ethnic/religious suppression of other ethnic nationalities implanted the seed of crime and predispose these constituent groups to resort to criminal vises as mechanisms for self-help and countering the menacing criminal state. We relied basically on documentary method of data collection and predicated our investigation on the theory of neo-colonial state as the theoretical framework. The central thesis of the paper is that the rabid use of state apparatus to commit acts of deprivation, segregation, alienation, domination and ethnic cleansing leads to regionalization of crimes and internalization of criminal vises as mechanisms for survival of ethnic nationalities. These acts proliferate conflicts and hate speeches among constituent nationalities
