Journal of African Studies and Sustainable Development

Every human being has a spatio-cosmic origin, since he emerges from a family. Every family situates itself within an ethnic environment, since ethnicity is a mark of identification. However, when an unwarranted emphasis is laid on ethnicity for the sole purpose of subjugation, suppression, marginalization and oppression, then the disastrous tool of ethnicism will be damagingly inaugurated with all of its negative and dehumanizing allied factors and terrible consequences to the human family. Although the world of man is narrow when considered from the prism of his ethnic origin, but fundamentally, man is by his very constitution equally vast and would be terribly harmed when the vast expanse of his constitution is neglected because of ethnicism. This paper decries the evil effects of ethnicism and the societal dangers it portends to the human family and appeals for an anthropological understanding that takes into cognizance the fundamental constitution of the human person.

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