The paper examined the moderating effect of rent seekers on sectarianism and communal crisis in a multi-ethnic society, using Nigeria as a case study through a systematic review method. Various secondary information were sources from several databases, journal, Newspaper, Magazines, and so on, and thematic analysis was used to subject the information to analysis, from which the findings are provided and inferences are drawn. The findings revealed that sectarianism, which is the politicization of ethnic identities has led to increasing competition for resources, discrimination, and have eventually spur communal crisis in Nigeria. This has resulted to loss of lives, increase fatalities, displacement of persons, abuse of human rights, livelihood destruction hence, affecting national security. This reveals the use of sectarianism to foster communal crises in the Nigeria society. In addition, the findings revealed that rent seekers used various activities such as corruption, inequality, tax, and so on to deploy sectarianism that tends to aggravate communal crisis in Nigeria due to the fight for available resources. Such crises have led to loss of lives and property, and in the long run hindering the sustainable development of the society. Moreover, rent seekers use the political influence obtained through sectarianism to generate more economic rents for their selfishness and hence, becoming major cause of communal crises that hamper socio-economic development goals in the Nigeria society. In addition, rent seeking is often used for conflict-amplifying mechanism in Nigeria hence, leading to severe communal crises that affect the socioeconomic development of people and of the nation. It recommended that the government should cut off any source of humanitarian rents and also reduce the potential of using sectarianism as a tool for capturing resources that should have been meant for the population towards enhancing the effective distribution of resources to the betterment of the citizens.
Keywords: Nigeria, communal crisis, multi-ethnic society, rent seekers, rent seeking, sectarianism
