Detailed Solution

Ethnic politics in Nigeria can be traced to the Richard's Constitution.

The Constitution did not promote the unity of Nigeria due to the fact that the division of the country into three administrative units isolated the people more instead of uniting them as he had proposed. For this, Richard had been seriously accused of introducing tribal politics and regionalism in Nigerian body politic.

The constitution provided for three unequal regions and so laid the ugly foundation for tribalism or ethnicism in the country. It should then be strongly believed that this later led to the Nigerian civil war which started on 6th July, 1967 and came to an end on 12th January 1970.