Inter-Ethnic Marriage as an Ingredient for Coexistence in a multicultural Society: Elechi Amadi’s <i>Woman of Calabar</i> as a Paradigm

Abstract

Nigeria is made up of over 250 ethnic nationalities and each of these groups is further divided into smaller sub-groups. Mistrust, greed and envy amongst others are responsible for the aggression, hatred and bitterness that have characterized her day to day experiences. This paper is motivated by the need to interrogate the ingredients that have sustained the continued coexistence of the different ethnic nationalities in spite of her multicultural nature. Adopting the integral humanism theoretical framework, this paper identified intermarriage as a major factor that has contributed to the continued search for unification instead of separation in the face of religious and cultural differences as exemplified in Elechi Amadi’s Woman of Calabar. The analytic approach and the qualitative research methodology were adopted in this paper.