Samuel Stouffer and other authors coined relative deprivation to describe the complaints that affected the relationships between two arms of the USA military (Pettigrew, 2016: 8). Some men in the Air Corpsmen alleged that their military police counterparts were promoted faster than they were (Grasso, Yoxon, Karampampas, and Temple, 2017: 401; Smith, Pettigrew, Pippin, and Bialosiewicz, 2012: 204). However, Stouffer maintained that the best basis of comparison should not be the military police because some members of the former had enjoyed promotion (Smith et al., 2012: 204). Relative deprivation is associated with the works of Ted Gurr, Psychological Factors in Civil Violence (1968) and Why Men Rebel (1970) (Borum, 2004; Richardson, 2011).
62
In defining relative deprivation, three steps are crucial. The first is that individuals or groups must make a comparison. The second step is that there must be mental appraisal through which an individual or group concludes that he/she is being deprived of some things (Smith et al., 2012: 204). The third is that such disadvantages must be perceived as unfair. The affected group must believe that it deserves better, and this belief leads to anger and resentment (Smith et al., 2012: 204). Thus, relative deprivation suggests that one views one’s group as worse in comparison with some other groups (Smith and Pettigrew, 2015: 1).
Relative deprivation may be individual or group relative deprivation. The first one applies when a person compares his or her condition with those of others around him/her while group relative deprivation is when a group compares its conditions to those of another group (Asingo, 2018: 67; Smith and Pettigrew, 2015: 2). Group relative deprivation may include a group examining if it has been unjustly treated or denied its entitlements compared to other regions or with other ethnic, religious, and/or linguistic groups (Asingo, 2018: 67). For instance, based on a survey, Black South Africans feel more aggrieved at the individual level, while white South Africans feel more aggrieved at the group level (Smith and Pettigrew, 2015: 5). This form of relative deprivation also describes the situation in Nigeria where an ethnic group feel deprived compared to other ethnic groups. The third type of relative deprivation is intrapersonal, in which an individual feels deprived considering one’s previous living condition (Asingo, 2018: 75).
Relative deprivation theory refers to the idea that feelings of deprivation and discontent are related to a desired point of reference (Flynn, 2011: 100). Relative deprivation depicts the difference between what people want and what they obtain (Saleh, 2013: 165). The practical detail of relative deprivation theory is that persons or groups feel disadvantaged when they perceive their situations or entitlements as inferior in comparison with those of others (Flynn, 2011: 100). The essence of relative deprivation is the feeling that the present situation could be improved when compared to an existing or perceived existing better situation. Hence, until a feeling of relativity occurs, one may not know there is deprivation, and there may not be any need to address the root causes of such deprivation. Thus, elites play an important role in articulating this feeling of relativity. In the case of Nigeria, political elites, in a bid to advance their interest, instigate their followers to embark on political and religious protests to claim
63
deprivation of their socio-economic entitlements (Omololu, 2012). This has led to the emergence of various ethnic organisations and resulted in ethnic and religious crises.
Relative deprivation has been criticised by scholars (Dube and Guimond, 1986; Martin and Murray, 1984) because it neglects actual deprivation and uses perceived deprivation (Asingo, 2018: 68). Even with these criticisms, relative deprivation theory can be used to explain why violence occurs in societies. Relative deprivation theory has been used in several studies.
Relative deprivation theory has been used to explain matters like poor physical health (Adler, Epel, Castellazzo, and Ickovics, 2000 cited in Smith et al., 2012: 203) and collective protest participation (Newton, Mann, and Geary, 1980 cited in Smith et al., 2012: 203). Asingo (2018) and Grasso et al. (2017: 402) have used it in explaining voting. Guimond and Dubé- Simard (1983) used it in their study of the Quebec nationalist movement. Walker and Mann (1987) utilised the theory in their study of unemployment and social protest. Stark and Taylor (1991), in their study of migration incentives, made use of the relative deprivation theory.
Farooq, Bukhari, and Ahmed (2017) equally made use of the theory with respect to the Arab spring.
Relative deprivation has also been used as a prism to study insurgency in Nigeria (Agbiboa, 2013; Agyemang and Lukman, 2018; Akinyetun, 2020). It has also been applied in studying how the different ethnic groups claim superiority over other ethnic groups and identity politics in Nigeria (Okeke, 2016; Yakubu, 2018). Ezemenaka, (2021) demonstrates that failure in governance had brought feelings of deprivation which have orchestrated youth violence and threat to national security in Nigeria.
The common trend among these studies is that if a group is relatively deprived and the situation is not well managed, the group may resort to aggressive tendencies. Hence, frustration-aggression is relevant to the analysis of relative deprivation theory. Put differently, relative deprivation may breed frustration and consequently, aggression. The nexus between the two theories was established by Gurr (2016: 23), who opines that ‘Relative deprivation denote [sic] the tension that develops from a discrepancy between the "ought"
and the "is" of collective value satisfaction, and that disposes men to violence’ (Gurr, 2016:
23). Frustration-aggression theory is strongly linked to Dollard and his colleagues at Yale University in 1939 (Gurr, 2016: 33). Aggression is always the progeny of frustration and anger, especially when there is frustration in getting what a group feels is due to it (Agbu,
64
2004: 13). They essentially postulate that ‘the occurrence of aggressive behaviour always presupposes the existence of frustration and, contrariwise, that the existence of frustration always leads to some form of aggression’ (Gurr, 2016: 33). The anger that emanates from frustration, especially prolonged or sharply felt, leads men to aggression, and these are catalysts for political violence (Gurr, 2016: 36-37).
This study uses the theory to explain how, in the context of failed integration strategies, political elites manipulate ethnic and religious factors to instigate the citizens to protest perceived deprivation. This has remained a potent political instrument used by the Nigerian political elites to advance their interests. Political elites often manipulate the claims of deprivation to encourage violence, using the diversified ethnoreligious differences. They use this to arouse the consciousness of most citizens within their ethnoreligious groups on the perceived inequality in the economic and educational sectors (Carment, 2003: 425;
Richardson, 2011: 1). They rationalise the various socio-economic failings such as unemployment, poverty, poor education, among others, on the prevailing deprivation engendered by the diverse nature of the polity (Richardson, 2011: 1). While these prevailing crises generated by inadequate basic infrastructures affect many citizens in their respective ethnic groups, the few elites often enjoy the largesse of adequate access to such facilities.
3. 5 Elites, National Integration, and Deprivation in Nigeria
Federal stability is not an abstraction. It is a function of the attitudinal disposition of the elites concerning the implementation of the various legislative frameworks necessary to promote a sense of national community among the component units. Thus, the promotion of national integration in a diverse society connotes the implementation of policies that would lead to equitable distribution of amenities among the federating units to avert any sense of deprivation. This explains the importance of analysing the Nigerian federal system within the context of elite, integration, and relative deprivation theories.
Existing literature tends to use one or two of the chosen theories. The originality of this study is partly based on its use of the combination of these three theories to study the Nigerian federal system. The use of the three theories is so crucial as they support each other, and it also allows the subjection of the study to a robust analysis. Proponents of the elite theory argue that the elites play pivotal roles in social, political, and economic decision making. In
65
the context of Africa in general, and Nigeria in particular, elites played important roles in pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial eras. At independence, most colonised countries were faced with the task of national integration. It is for this reason that integration theory is part of the theoretical framework. Colonialism created divided indigenous elites that competes among itself. The result is that all policies and programmes are viewed in zero-sum game lenses. Thus, the side-effect of most policies and programmes is a feeling of relative deprivation and it is for this reason that this study chose relative deprivation theory.