Conflict Management in Nigeria : Issues and Challenges 9781905068845

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CONFLICT MANAGEMENT IN NIGERIA ISSUES AND CHALLENGES

Published by Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd P.O. Box 43418 London SE11 4XZ http://www.adonis-abbey.com Email: [email protected]

First Edition, April 2007 Copyright 2007 © Oshita O. Oshita British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 9781905068845 (PB) The moral right of the author has been asserted All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted at any time or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher

Printed and bound in Great Britain

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CONFLICT MANAGEMENT IN NIGERIA ISSUES AND CHALLENGES

By

Oshita O. Oshita

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Table of Contents Preface Dedication Acknowledgement Acronyms/Abbreviations

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Chapter One Introduction

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Chapter Two Understanding Conflict in Nigeria

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Chapter Three Conflict as a Weapon of (Mass) Distraction

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Chapter Four Conflict Interventions in Nigeria

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Chapter Five The Strategic Conflict Assessment (SCA) of Nigeria

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Chapter Six Perspectives on Conflict Interventions in Nigeria

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Chapter Seven Building Peace in Diversity

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Bibliography/Further Reading

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Appendices Appendix A: Appendix B:

Table of Conflict Causation

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Consolidated plan of action for the implementation of the SCA Report

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Index

110

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PREFACE There is a need to draw attention to the gamut of issues that could impinge on the design of conflict intervention processes, including the management of outcomes and the challenges that interveners encounter in working to prevent, manage and resolve conflicts in Nigeria. This monograph, more or less, presents a generic template for interrogating some of the interlocking issues in conflict interventions in Nigeria. The idea is to see what impact these activities have on the people and how they meet the goal of conflict reduction. This publication is therefore aimed at sensitising stakeholders of conflict interventions in Nigeria on issues of process design and outcome awareness. The study notes the changing strategic, political and economic parameters that account for the diverse responses by project beneficiaries, government, local and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), International Governmental Organisations (IGOs), Multilateral Organisations, etc., in conflict situations. The analyses in the book suggest that conflict interveners risk derailing their interventions and wasting scarce resources if they fail to focus adequate attention on the key concerns of process delivery and outcomes monitoring, as well as the expectations and responses of workshop participants and end-users. The study identifies historical, structural, and cultural factors in conflict causation and implicates elite manipulation, opportunism, social injustice, corruption and inequity as obstacles to peace-building and pro-poor peaceful conflict transformation. The study concludes that state and non-state actors require enormous political will if their collaboration is to yield the degree of synergy and multi-functional cooperation needed for the mitigation of the conditions that fuel violent conflict in Nigeria. The study is based on field and desk studies and was written while on a Chevening fellowship at the University of Bradford, United Kingdom. Dr. Oshita O. Oshita Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR), Abuja, Nigeria.

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DEDICATION

For the memory of:

Ochikono Oshita (2002-2003) Abraham Eweh Enyia (1958-2006)

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT An earlier version of this monograph was submitted as part of the requirements for the award of the Master’s degree in Peace and Conflict Studies of the University of Bradford, United Kingdom, where I was a Chevening Scholar between 2002 and 2004. Thanks to Professors Tom Woodhouse and Oliver Ramsbotham who facilitated my admission to the University of Bradford. I appreciate the cooperation of staff of the Department of Peace Studies at Bradford, especially Jim, Nick, Shaun, Garry, Hazel, and Shanaz. The 2003 MA class was inestimably helpful following the death of my baby son, Ochikono Oshita. I am indebted to the British Council (Nigeria), for the privilege to study as a Chevening. David Roberts, formerly of the British Council Nigeria, and Grace Kwasau prepared me for the experience of living and studying in the United Kingdom. My Regional Services Officer (RSO), Chris Brooks, and Davis Chavunduka of British Council (Manchester) were of enormous help throughout my stay in England. I am thankful to Dr. David Francis, my Supervisor at Bradford. His suggestions, encouragement and friendship were invaluable to me. My family and I owe a lot of appreciation to him and his lovely family. I am grateful to the former Director General of IPCR, Dr. Sunday Ochoche fwc, and the IPCR Management for endorsing my absence from office during the period of my study. I am also thankful to Ambassador M. B. Ekpang who introduced me to Chevening and Prof. Godwin Sogolo, my former Director and Head of Department at IPCR for mentoring me. I appreciate the support of Prof. Uduak Archibong of the University of Bradford, especially when Ochikono’s death made the horizon appear so dark. Many thanks to the sources of my joy, Banku my wife, and our children, Okibe, Ufeh, Muebe, and little Kijay, who was born shortly before our departure for Nigeria.

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ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS AAPW ATM

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AU CBO CEPID

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CHRCR

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CIA CRESNET

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CSOs DFID

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DSC ECOWAS

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EPR

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FGD HRVIC

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IGO

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INCORE INEC

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INGO

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IPCR

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LEEDS

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LNG MDG MNC

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Academic Association Peace Works African Traditional Mechanisms for Conflict Resolution African Union Community Based Organisation Centre for Peace Initiative and Development Centre for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Conflict Impact Assessment Conflict Resolution Stakeholders Network Civil Society Organisations Department for International Development Direct, Structural & Cultural Violence Economy Community of West African States Emergency Preparedness and Response Focus Group Discussion Human Rights Violations and Investigation Commission (a.k.a Oputa Panel) International Governmental Organisation International Conflict Research Independent National Electoral Commission International Non-governmental Organisation Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution Local Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy Liquefied Natural Gas Millennium Development Goals Multinational Corporation

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Acronyms and Abbreviations

MNOCs NAP NAPEP

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ND NDDC NDE NEEDS

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NEMA

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NGO NORAD NPI NPP OTI PCA PCIA PESAN PIC

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RSO TOR SCA SEEDS

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SERVICOM SLGC

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TNC UNDP

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UNICEF USAID

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WWF

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Multinational Oil Companies National Action Plan National Poverty Eradication Programme Niger Delta Niger Delta Development Commission National Directorate for Employment National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy National Emergency Management Agency Non-governmental Organisation Norwegian Agency for Development Nairobi Peace Initiative National Peace Policy Office of Transition Initiatives Project Conflict Assessment Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment Peace Studies Association of Nigeria Presidential Implementation Committee Regional Services Officer Terms of Reference Strategic Conflict Assessment State Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy Service Compact States and Local Governments Coordinators Transnational Corporation United Nations Development Programme United Nations Children Fund United States Agency for International Development World Wildlife Fund for Nature

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Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

The inauguration of civil (democratic) governance in Nigeria on May 29 1999 was accompanied by an unprecedented rise in episodic violent conflicts. Between May 29 1999 and the last quarter of 2006 the country witnessed some of the most virulent inter and intra community conflicts by ethnic, identity, and political groups, raising doubts about the prospects of democracy and the future of the nation. Within the same period, the stakes in the control of power have increased, with politically motivated assassinations becoming something of a sub-culture. The scenario thus implicates the political orientation in the country and the democratic practices that have characterised the nearly eight years of civil governance. This study evaluates how conflict intervention processes undertaken by various actors impacted on the different types of conflicts and examines some of the issues and challenges that have implications for progress in the prevention and management of conflicts in Nigeria. The monograph also aims at assessing the process designs of conflict intervention activities, their outcomes and how these may have impacted on individual participants, the target communities and the larger society. It equally discusses the historical, structural, cultural, and strategic factors in Nigeria's conflict context and implicates corruption, social injustice, inequity, and elite opportunism as obstacles to pro-poor conflict transformation. The study further explores the linkages that might exist between conflict intervention activities on the one hand and the revival of identity resolutions and the perennial upsurge in violent conflicts on the other. The book also considers alternative options to the predominantly reactive model of conflict intervention approaches that, to a large degree, still hold sway in Nigeria. The study is therefore both an exposition and a critique of how the activities of various actors might impinge on the success or otherwise of the ways in which we respond to conflict 10

Introduction

disorders in Nigeria. The actors in focus include government and its agencies, civil society organisations (CSOs), nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and international development partners. Thus, the discourse shall involve an evaluation of aspects of the responses by actors from the three tracks - government, civil society, and the international development partners - from the inception of the Fourth Republic in 1999 to 2006. We are focusing on this period in order to draw attention to the fact that though none of the violent conflicts that occurred between 1999 and 2006 could be said to be of a national scale, these conflicts, nonetheless negatively impacted on the community psyche and the efforts towards national integration. In addition, the volume and intensity of the conflicts, the actors and the ways of dealing with these conflicts have experienced significant changes during this period. Reference shall be made to the activities of some state and non-state actors in conflict mitigation efforts in Nigeria during the period under study. These include local NGOs, government (local, state, and national), international governmental agencies (e.g. USAID/OTI, DFID) and multilateral institutions (UNDP, UNICEF, and the World Bank). For the purpose of this study we shall only be concerned with Tracks one (state) and two (non-state) as espoused in the nine Tracks of Multi-track Diplomacy. The overall philosophy of conflict interventions is also examined and where applicable, the pre-intervention assumptions and their outcomes have been evaluated within some specific conflict settings in Nigeria. The book evaluates the degree of synergy or lack thereof, among key actors in the conflict resolution field in Nigeria. The basic forms of government intervention in conflict in Nigeria have been highlighted e.g. the use of the Police/Army, Judicial/Boundary Commission, and lately, the research and policy-driven approach encapsulated in the proactive work of the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR). Within this context, the book will also attempt a conceptualisation of the multidimensional role of the IPCR as the bridge path between state and non-state actors and the implication of IPCR's role for the future of conflict regulation in Nigeria. The conduct of the Strategic Conflict Assessment (SCA) of Nigeria by IPCR

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represents a watershed in inter-agency collaboration by stakeholders in conflict in Nigeria during the period under study. Thus, the book discusses aspects of the process design, objectives and findings of the SCA as well as the recommendations and the National Action Plan for their implementation. The book brings together elements of architecture for inclusive conflict intervention within the context of a social environment that promotes proactive engagement with conflict as a human interest in Nigeria. It is hoped that this book would enable conflict interveners in Nigeria mainstream concern for process issues into the design and implementation strategies of their interventions for optimal results. Obviously, violent conflicts in Nigeria disrupt economic activities including investment in conflict-sensitive development work by undermining the efforts of stakeholders to regulate conflict through inter-agency collaboration. The study explores ways of adding value to conflict mitigation as a viable response to the problem of violent conflict in Nigeria. It does this by suggesting a multi-cultural and multi-track framework that would secure peace for the collective enjoyment of human rights. Such a right-based approach will respect the mandate of the majority while protecting the legitimate rights of minorities and other vulnerable groups. A number of suggestions are made that might improve the delivery mechanisms of conflict interventions, reduce negative outcomes and enhance the responsiveness of institutions to conflict mitigation in Nigeria. Towards this end, this study briefly explores the conflict profile of Nigeria, interrogates issues relating to process design and outcome of conflict interventions and the socio-political and resource constraints experienced by conflict interveners. Two possible sources of ethical constraint are envisaged in the writing of this book: 1) The author is an employee of the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR), which is a key actor in (Track One) peace and conflict interventions in Nigeria; and 2) In 2002 the author coordinated the research that led to the publication of Nigeria's Strategic Conflict Assessment (SCA) in 2003.

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Introduction

These facts might have implications for the views and conclusions in this study. However, the analyses and conclusions in the book are the personal views of the author and in no way representative of the official position of IPCR. It is hoped that the issues and practices highlighted will help to improve the processes and outcomes of conflict interventions in Nigeria. Methodology Evolving a generally accepted standard for evaluating Conflict and Peace building interventions has been a concern for peace practitioners and development administrators. A number of evaluation approaches have been suggested by scholars (see for example, Lund 2000, 2001; Bush 2000). However, it is arguable whether the results of such evaluations are just mere guess work based on the fallacious logic of post hoc, ergo propter hoc.1 Thus, it is still a wish that the explanation of events in ex post facto Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment (PCIA) should be unified with the logic of explanations of phenomena in the natural sciences. This is the case, whichever approach a researcher chooses to adopt - sequential analysis, matching method, meanings and perceptions or logical plausibility - in evaluating conflict and peace building interventions. Here, as is the case with economics, practitioners and analysts must proceed with the legitimate use of 'reasonable' or 'cautious' attribution of events and activities in a ceteris paribus (all things being equal), fashion. After all, economics, which employs this facile phrase (i.e. ceteris paribus) in its explanations, still prides itself as the most scientific of the social sciences. From the foregoing, Leonhardt (2001) draws attention to Kenneth Bush's remark concerning the ‘perforation’ of methodology by politics in the evaluation of the impact of peace and conflict interventions. Leonhardt tasks Peace and Conflict Impact Assessments (PCIAs) with the need to relate individual conflict intervention activities to the wider conflict context (micro-macro relationship); how to attribute observable changes (positive or negative) in the conflict situation to third party interventions; and how to monitor unintended effects of 13

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interventions. Bush would regard these issues as inclusive parts of the architecture of the conflict puzzle (Bush 2000; 6). Leonhardt (2001; 3) rightly concludes that the politics of PCIAs “focuses too much on issues of legitimisation/impact at the expense of process management and institutional learning on working in conflict situations…” Obviously, owing to conceptual difficulties and the different emphasis that stakeholders associate with the evaluation of peace and conflict intervention projects, there can be no rule-of-the-thumb answers to many of the questions that often occur. The analyses in this study only make linkages and expositions that might be useful in our understanding of the conflict scenario in Nigeria from a multi level perspective of country, programme and community without aspiring to provide direct answers to the complex questions that arise. Bearing in mind the above, this study is essentially deskbased, relying on information in books, project summaries, and manuals authored by some of the individuals and organisations involved in conflict interventions in Nigeria, along with independent critiques, commentaries and surveys. The use of case study reports and commissioned briefs avails us of information from project executors themselves to see how they have grappled with conflict situations. My personal experiences while participating in a number of conflict intervention projects during the past seven years are also brought to bear on the analyses. The role of some 'levers for conflict regulation' in Nigeria will be highlighted to see if and how these might complement the practice of democracy as a mechanism for conflict mitigation. We shall briefly interrogate the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) as those structures that might help to distribute the social dividends of democracy. Our focus is on the issues and variables that relate to the political economy of conflict development and conflict intervention in Nigeria and how events in particular conflict situations might be linked to the wider conflict scenario in the country. The significance of the study can be seen in the key objective of forging analytical clarity and understanding of the multivariate factors that impinge on the conflict intervention context in Nigeria with a view to shaping future action. The 14

Introduction

book advances ideas and conclusions that will contribute to a culture of peaceful engagement of conflict not only in Nigeria but also in multiethnic countries entangled in similar conditions as Nigeria. Chapter Two gives a conceptual background to the discussion of conflict and its dimensions, and attempts an explanation of the thematic issues involved. In Chapter Three we discuss violent conflict as a weapon of (mass) distraction in Nigeria. In this chapter we expose the complexity of conflict, its dynamics and the fluidity of its various forms and manifestations. In Chapter Four we address the concept and structure of conflict interventions in Nigeria with reference to the experiences of different actors. Chapter Five focuses on the significance of the Strategic Conflict Assessment (SCA) of Nigeria and the National Action Plan (NAP), and their impact on conflict interventions since 2003. Chapter Six of the book brings out some perspectives on conflict interventions in Nigeria and examines some of the national agencies whose activities could have some positive impact on the peace and conflict environment in Nigeria. In Chapter Seven, which is also the conclusion, we present an analysis of conflict interventions within the context of the challenges of peace building in a heterogeneous setting. Here, we present a number of forward-looking ideas based on the recognition of diversity and the promotion of good governance through proactive practices in conflict interventions. It is hoped that the ideas canvassed in this monograph will contribute useful insights for interveners in the regulation of violent conflict in Nigeria and stave off the dysfunctional effects of the deep levels of animosities, which have threatened harmonious social relations from May 1999 to date. The work ends with two appendices from the Strategic Conflict Assessment (SCA) Report, 2003. These are the Conflict Causation Table and the National Action Plan (NAP), as appendix A and B respectively. Together, these two documents provide the reader with a bird's eye view of the grounds covered in the SCA study.

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Notes & References 1When we suppose that one event is due to another, merely because it occurred after that other one, then we are guilty of the fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. In making sense of happenings in our world there is the tendency to attribute to earlier events the latter ones in the form of cause and effects even when the chances of the occurrences not being connected are just as good. Bush, K. (2000) “The Logic of PCIA” Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA), Colombo, Newsletter Volume IV/Issue VI, November/December 2000. Institute for Peace Conflict Resolution (2003), Strategic Conflict Assessment Consolidated and Zonal Reports. Leonhardt, Manuela (2001) Ownership, Purposes and Approaches - Towards a Unified PCIA Methodology, in The Berghof Handbook for Conflict Transformation, November 2001, Berghof Research Centre for Constructive Management (http://www.berghof-handbook.net/leonhandt/s2.htm accessed on 27/12/2003). Lund, M. (2000) Improving conflict prevention by learning from experience: issues, approaches and results, pp.63-88, in Lund, Michael & G. Rasamoelina (eds.), The Impact of Conflict Prevention Network Yearbook 1999/2000, Baden-Baden: Nomos. Lund, M. et al. (2001) The Effectiveness of Civil Society Initiatives in controlling violent conflicts and building peace. A study of Three Approaches in the Greater Horn of Africa. Washington, Management Systems International, Inc. Wolpe, Howard (1974) Urban Politics in Nigeria: A study of port Harcourt, Berkeley: University of California Press. Zartman, William (1995) Governance as Conflict Management: Politics in West Africa, Brookings.

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Chapter 2 UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT IN NIGERIA

To understand conflict, we need to know something of its profile, manifestations, causes, types, and levels. The way to begin is to define conflict as a concept. Our starting point, therefore, is the question, what is conflict? Conflict is the struggle between opposing forces. Conflict may involve two or more actors and could be over resources, ideas, values, wishes and desires, or deep-seated needs. One conflict could have root causes, proximate causes and the triggers. The triggers serve as immediate sparks preceding the eruption of violence. A conflict can also be at various stages of escalation or de-escalation in the conflict spectrum. Conflict is normal in human relationships and it serves as the motor of change. But conflict has been misunderstood by many who simply regard it as necessarily negative. Conflict is wrongly associated with war, fight, anarchy, misunderstanding, stress, crisis, aggression, arguments, etc. People who hold such a harmful view of conflict tend to handle conflict in a destructive way. The point is, most of the remarkable developments in the world arose from conflict situations. The fear of conflict can thus become counter productive for an individual, community or nation. The Chinese define conflict as “opportunity for change”. Conflict as a phenomenon provides us with great possibilities, but it is how we deal with it that can be negative or positive. According to the Chinese, conflict is something to be managed constructively so as to achieve positive change, development, understanding, friendship, progress, peace, communication, love, etc. Conflict may involve individuals, groups or institutions and it often borders on inherent human needs. The one thing we must all understand about conflict is that it is a fact of life and it is inevitable. It is the response (constructive or destructive) that we choose for any one conflict that determines what outcomes we get from a conflict situation. Generally, perceptions of what a conflict is differ from

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culture to culture, hence the need to further clarify this januslike concept. A conflict is both a challenge and an opportunity. It is like a puzzle for parties to grapple with as well as a chance for them to articulate their needs and values. Conflict presents an opportunity for one to say what causes her dissatisfaction and satisfaction. Rather than view conflict as a negative manifestation of energies, it “affords people the opportunity to develop and exercise both self-determination and self-reliance” (Bush & Folger 1994; 82). Conflict is an inevitable universal phenomenon that is as old as humankind itself. Like weather, we learn to cope with conflict since it will always occur as part of our daily life. And just as we blame bad weather only because we put on the wrong type of clothes, so we condemn conflict because we fail to utilise the opportunities it presents for pro-people changes (Fryer 2003; 5). The urge to regulate or resolve conflict is a continuing challenge and an integral part of the human interest. In recent years, academic interest, study and concern with methodical approach to the art of conflict engagement has grown in leaps and bounds. But perceptions and responses to conflict tend to vary from one environment to another, and informed by the culture, traditions and psychosocial history of the people. Thus, pre-colonial societies in Africa had indigenous mechanisms for dispute settlement, the maintenance of peace, and promotion of good governance. Conflicts may also be dealt with according to types. Different strategies for interventions can be adopted to suit the stage of the conflict in the conflict-peace continuum. Interventions to resolve a conflict may be initiated by third parties as well as by parties to the dispute themselves. Traditional mechanisms dealt with inter-personal and group conflicts. These included political and material conflicts, the latter better known in contemporary parlance as resource conflicts. Resource conflict in traditional societies in Nigeria involved disputes over land or territories, kingship succession and inheritance rights. Conflict mediation in pre-colonial societies was conducted according to the prevailing notion of good governance. This may not be comparable to the widespread contemporary 18

Understanding Conflict in Nigeria

meaning of the liberal democratic concept of good governance. Being time-bound, the notion of good governance is always a reflection of the vision, ideals and commitment of those responsible for engineering social values at a given historical epoch. That the neo-liberal idea of good governance is the measuring standard today is a consequence of the end of the Cold War and the retreat of socialism as a competing conception of social reality. Thus, today's emphasis favours individual liberties, participatory democracy and market liberalisation as the hallmarks of acceptable political organisation. In pre-colonial Nigeria the various approaches and mechanisms for the conduct of citizen diplomacy and the management of conflict were knotted around grassroots governance, which predated the exogenous state-centric approaches that came with the peace of Westphalia of 1648. It was this declaration that state sovereignty constituted the unit of legitimacy of international political power that undermined the existence of non-western models and traditional avenues of political authority. Unlike the Westphalian state, the source of community bond and authority in pre-colonial Africa resided in the network of heuristic beliefs and socially constructed taboos, oracles, ancestral spirits, gods and goddesses, which reinforced the motivation for the regulation of community conflicts. These also constituted the basis for ethical conduct and judgements. The advent of colonialism thus witnessed the violation and supplanting of the endogenous values of pre-colonial societies with their exogenous alternatives. Understandably, the postcolonial approaches to conflict resolution revolved around the legitimised sovereign state and its formal power and authority in coercing citizens to obey and to act in ways they normally would not. This has had obvious ontological ramifications for the completeness of life of the traditional African communities whose identities were dislocated and psychosocial bonds disrupted. The state-centric model or what Richmond (2002) describes as first generation approaches to conflict resolution, characterised by supply-driven, top-bottom relation with conflict actors, replaced the traditional conflict management approaches of indigenous communities. In many places the communally driven bottom-top indigenous mechanisms were

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sacked and replaced with top-down foreign alternatives. This introduction and establishment of institutions and approaches that were deeply incongruous with the existential realities of local communities engendered new conflicts and compounded old ones. Apart from the physical ramifications of colonialism for the locals, the confrontation with fundamentally different belief systems brought in new elements of challenge into the character of conflict. Consequently, any engagement with the conflict phenomenon in present day Nigeria must grapple with the multiple impacts of the complex nexus of historical, economic, political, cultural, religious and psychosocial dimensions of conflict. In other words, historical legacy plays a decisive role in the profile of conflict in Nigeria and in shaping its discourse to date. The economic factor is pre-eminent because it serves as the driving force of history while the historical factor is all encompassing by virtue of its influence and compelling linkages with all other factors. For example, in much of what is today's northern Nigeria, the emirate system prevailed, Obas' kingdoms dominated in the Southwest, while the Southeast had typically republican and fluid administrative structures. Colonial administrators reckoned with those indigenous systems that minimised administrative cost and facilitated the manipulation and control of the indigenous people and their institutions. These considerations informed the adoption of indirect rule in some parts of Nigeria by the colonial authorities. For example, while the emirate structures in the predominantly Islamic north were congenial for the application of the indirect rule system, the system was resisted in the mainly republican Southeast. Within that context, the ensuing conflicts were dictated by the responses of different groups to the structures of the colonial political authority. The interface of endogenous and exogenous factors ignited some of the complexities that still inform different levels of socio-political and economic relations in present day Nigeria. Perhaps Nigeria's history of military rule explains her predisposition to the reactive model of responding to conflict, according to which interventions in conflict occurred at the height of the violence or after. In such situations, diplomacy is shut out, and the use of the military to quell full blown violence 20

Understanding Conflict in Nigeria

between conflict parties becomes an attractive option. To successfully intervene in any conflict depends, to a large extent, on the preparedness of the intervener and the amount of information at his/her disposal. Much also depends on our understanding of the specific context of the conflict disorder, its early warning signs, and the general nature of conflict behaviour. Contemporary Conflict Scenario in Nigeria: Though some of the causes of conflicts in Nigeria predate the inception of civil rule in 1999, new variables no doubt emerged that make the period 1999 to 2006 significant as the focus of our study. The return to civil rule was sudden and dramatic, coming on the heels of the death of General Sani Abacha, who had unequivocal commitment to elongating his stay as Head of State and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria. Thus, the abrupt termination of one of the most ruthless military dictatorships in Nigeria's history created an opportunity for the critical mass to ventilate long suppressed grievances and anger. This triggered a spontaneous culture of revivalism and agitation among different social groupings. It was a serious challenge to the government and civil society to peacefully resolve the various conflicts arising from the new order. Thus, the sudden collapse of the Abacha dictatorship also accounted for the heightened volume of community conflict and the intensity of violent social unrest at the inception of the civilian regime in 1999. The establishment of the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR) in 2000 was a strategic response by the Federal Government towards tackling conflict disorders in Nigeria. Six years after, we must begin to take stock of events. Can we associate the intractability of conflict in Nigeria, in spite of efforts at resolution, with the application of culturally insensitive conflict resolution models? Can we relate this scenario to the adequacy or lack thereof, of the trans-cultural training manuals for conflict transformation workshops in use in Nigeria? Obviously, the Nigerian scenario raises valid epistemological questions regarding the balance between local action and so-called global culture in the application of

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knowledge in the 21st century. One of the questions to be addressed is whether individuals and groups can globalise without negating authentic elements of their concrete cultural existence. The belief that complex ethno-conflict situations in remote parts elsewhere can be accounted for by using so-called culture-neutral knowledge paradigms in conflict resolution is a problematic of contemporary conflict resolution practice. Intellectual history shows this pattern as a hang-over from the unity of science project of the early twentieth century (Oshita, 1993). Avruch and Black (1991) and Avruch (1998) dwell on the confusion to which the term culture has been subjected in conflict resolution theory and practice. Avruch (1998) argues that although culture has been theorized and explained in a plethora of ways, some of them misleading, it remains central to any engagement with conflict situations. Avruch (1998; 5) sees culture as “a derivative of individual experience, something learned or created by individuals themselves and passed on to them socially by contemporaries or ancestors”. This view presents culture as an essential possessive category of human cognition and the action of social wholes. Thus, every conflict involves pertinent culture-saturated questions that must not be ignored. Conflict resolution practice in Nigeria acknowledges, but fails to fit into a strategic framework that overtly accounts for the cultural nuances that matter in specific conflict situations. Culture as a dynamic multi-dimensional category distributed psychologically and socially among individuals and groups in conflict should be central to the practitioner's design of ameliorative programmes. This is especially crucial in a highly complex heterogeneous society like Nigeria where a conflict sometimes involves as many diverse parties as nomads, land cultivators and fishing communities with distinct historical and linguistic experiences. By neglecting research into the array of local conflict resolution approaches that characterised the existential circumstances of African civilisations, we engage unwittingly in a sanctimonious and exclusive search for what is good from a checklist that excludes the culture-drenched, time-tested and community-oriented conflict resolution practices in pre-colonial 22

Understanding Conflict in Nigeria

societies. Unfortunately, traditional conflict resolution techniques and approaches in Nigeria still remain a grey area as most practitioners and academics turn more attention to adapting the more researched western approaches for application in resolving local conflicts. Although modernisation has impacted on traditional values and beliefs, the essence of these beliefs is still definitive of the character of life and social action in most communities in Nigeria, and indeed, Africa. The need for research into culture-relevant approaches for conflict management and resolution is thus necessitated by the functional value of cultural dynamics in our world. Engaging with these issues in the context of the socio-political history of Nigeria for example, helps us to identify the sources of the multivariate factors that explain the responses of actors to conflict transformation. Researching conflict in Nigeria: Though the efforts of scholars like Wolpe (1974), Peter Lloyd (1966), Richard Sklar (1963), date back to the 1960s, the involvement of indigenous researchers in systematic empirical studies and documentation of factors affecting conflict development in Nigeria is relatively recent. Understandably, the early works of indigenous scholars were dominated by insights from the theoretical literature developed by scholars in Europe and America who were primarily anthropologists. One of the better known books, which is based on local studies is Community Conflicts in Nigeria, edited by Otite and Albert (1999), and facilitated by a non-governmental group, the Academic Associates Peace Works (AAPW). The book contains case studies of community conflicts across the geo-political regions of Nigeria, accompanied by descriptions of their intervention histories and the multi-dimensional nature of the challenge of conflict. Albert (2001) presents instances of third-party initiatives in peace building and conflict transformation in Nigeria. He applauds civil society-driven conflict intervention activities as indication of the future prospects of democracy in Nigeria. Osaghae (2001) flags the absence of reliable baseline information as devaluing conflict studies in Nigeria and

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highlights the constraints of existing approaches. On the diverse and often inconsistent criteria proposed by some studies regarding the number and composition of Nigeria's identity groups, the author worries that these fail to capture the reality on the ground. Asks Osaghae, “Is it 248 (Coleman, 1958), 62 (Murdock, 1975), 161 (Gandonu, 1978), 143 (Odetola, 1978), or 374 (Otite, 1990)? Or…is it 394 (Hoffman, 1974), or 619 (WenteLukas, 1985)?” (Osaghae 2001; 23). With the renewed interest in engaging with conflict as demonstrated in recent partnerships of government and civil society groups in Nigeria, it is appropriate to appraise some of the dominant conflict intervention efforts.1 This might help in clarifying some of the issues involved, energise follow up activities and hopefully prompt the search for a vade mecum for conflict intervention in Nigeria. Osaghae (2002; 222) alludes to the difficulties in researching into violent conflicts in Nigeria, the complexity of civil society interventions, and the tendency of government to worsen conflict situations through “violent, repressive, and undemocratic strategies of conflict management.” Adekanye (1995) emphasises the effect of economic regime on conflict, while Adedeji (1999) decries the prevalence of avoidable destructive conflict in Africa. Karl Maier (2000) and Wiebe Boer (2000) think Nigeria has an inexplicable ability to cope with persistent community conflict and insidious urban insecurity. Boer's conclusions derived from outcomes of conflict resolution initiatives conducted under the auspices of the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) of the United States government. Maier likens Nigeria's conflict disposition to the Heraclitean condition of becoming, as opposed to being. He argues that Nigeria's political pragmatism is nothing short of making brinkmanship into an art. He mirrors the existential dynamics in the Nigerian society after the chaotic patterns of social life in the city of Lagos and concludes that the country's survival as a political unit defies social scientific explanation. An ARD report for USAID (Wendy Marshall et al. 2001) gives an assessment of conflict actors in Nigeria and suggests directions for future USAID support to conflict mitigation in Nigeria. Similar studies include Ivana Vuco (2001) for the Centre for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution (CHRCR), 24

Understanding Conflict in Nigeria

Luc Reychler (2002), for the European Union Micro Project Programme, the ARD report on Strengthening Civil Society Capacity in Conflict Prevention and Peace building, and a number of initiatives by local NGOs.2 The instrumental use of conflict by some conflict entrepreneurs in Nigeria is an element of opportunism that is sustained by elite coalitions within the political, military and business domains, and transcends traditional ethnic differentiation. The subject of elite co-operation in pluralistic or deeply divided societies has been of considerable interest to scholars (Nordlinger 1972, Lijphart 1989, and Ryan 1995). Nordlinger (1972; 87) posits that “structured elite predominance is a necessary conflict regulating condition.” Ryan (1995; 45) associates the motivation of the elite with the desire “to fend off an external threat; dedication to the pursuit of economic values; the inability of any one group to obtain political office without support from other groups; and the threat of serious civil strife in the absence of co-operation”. To preserve itself the dominant elite class unites its cells across multi-ethnic lines notwithstanding the ordinarily perceived boundaries of group enmity in the society. Driven by rational self-interest, elite strategy of cooperation in Nigeria revolves around coalitions of convenience in business and politics, often employing such back-ups as the principles of proportional representation, power sharing and rotation, devolution of power, and mutual compromise. These principles of control are facilitated and strengthened with the collusion of the state system. This results in what Galtung refers to as structural violence, which in Nigeria is located in the state's marginalisation and systematic disempowerment of the critical mass of the population. Thus, the elite may fund violent conflict within or between their communities while at the same time sustaining commitment to the class alliances that guarantees its members' control over strategic state resources thereby obstructing the direct trickle down benefit for their various peoples. Richmond (2002; 126) argues that second generation or track II approaches to conflict resolution with their focus on the structures that promote conflict, human needs, and wider involvement of civil society, are still subject to the overbearing 25

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nature of the sovereign state. Richmond's meta-critique points to a curious form of utopia in the common belief that civil society-driven conflict resolution models are insulated from the encroachment of (state) authoritarianism. The basic philosophies of state sovereignty, authority and the use of (legitimate) force of coercion impinge on the conduct of every business, not the least, that of conflict transformation, though the latter is hardly appreciated. The problem-solving workshop approach that has dominated conflict resolution in Nigeria since 1999 when civil rule was inaugurated, assumes that conflict is “a subjective phenomenon dependent on altering disputants' negative stereotypes and understanding of each other through facilitation and problem-solving techniques” (Richmond 2002; 127). While re-echoing the place of basic liberties in the public domain, this approach culpably ignores direct reference to the deep-rooted structural factors that generate and nurture stereotypes and negative perceptions in the society. The general architecture of conflict manifestation in Nigeria between 1999 and 2006 directly interrogates the substantive social structures and the political environment under which state and non-state actors have operated in the country. An evaluation of conflict intervention activities in Nigeria must therefore account for the role of the state in the interaction between the forces of diversity and social dominance in communal conflict. Some theories of inter-group relations suggest that “co-equality” does not adequately describe relationships among salient groups within multiethnic societies (Ashmore, Jussim and Wilder, 2001; 106). According to these theories, “…societies tend to be organised as group-based hierarchies, with dominant groups enjoying disproportionate power, prestige, and privilege. This group-based hierarchy applies to both democratic and non-democratic states, despite differing discourses concerning inclusivity or pluralism” (Ibid. 107).

In the Nigerian case, these tendencies, which had been suppressed under authoritarian military rule, resurfaced with a torrent in 1999 when civil (democratic) rule was reintroduced in the country. These group-based hierarchies are defined by the 26

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asymmetry of power and reinforced by access to resources and degree of privatisation of public authority. When Nigerians breathed the air of democracy on May 29 1999 (against the backdrop of hard-nosed military dictatorship), it was an opportunity for interest groups to ventilate long suppressed and accumulated concerns and expectations. Arguably, the conflicts in Nigeria have to do with the actions and protests of groups that (a) have been consistent losers; (b) perceive themselves as losers; (c) scheming for dominance; (d) victims of structural violence; and (e) present the picture of a threat from the others. The Nigerian scenario seems to indicate that conflict interventions would have more positive impact on communities if the socio-economic and political institutions that promote group-based hierarchies and the interest of dominant segments against the basic needs of minority groups were dismantled. For, structural and cultural violence intensifies where public institutions become identified with specific groups, as tends to be the case in Nigeria. The challenge of peaceful conflict transformation in Nigeria increases with the reality whereby public institutions as common inheritance of society begin to find it easier to guarantee participation of some groups in sharing loses rather than the gains of social cooperation. The experiences of the populace with governance in Nigeria therefore triggered a fundamental deficit in the trust between the government and the Nigerian people. This is partly responsible for the new thinking in the direction of multi-track diplomacy. Here, the government is only one among many stakeholders of peace. McDonald and Diamond (2003) have identified nine tracks in Multi-track diplomacy that could be involved in the interplay of forces for building peace or preventing violence. These are: 1) government 2) professional conflict resolution (NGOs) 3)business 4) private citizens 5) training, research and education 6)activism 7) religious structures 8) funding 9) media and public opinion.

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Track one refers to interventions carried out by the government or its agencies, such as IPCR. Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) represent Professional Conflict Resolution, since these are the groups that are involved in promoting the professionalism in conflict resolution. Track three refers to the business community. Business requires a peaceful and tranquil environment to optimise profits, hence the need to invest in peace work. Track four is the private citizen, and in the Nigerian (African) context, includes the family, which exerts a strong influence on the citizen. The role of Training, Education and Research is captured in Track five. The contribution of this track is in building the capacity of stakeholders of peace. Track six is Activism, referring to civil society and its contribution to peace. The place of religion is represented in track seven. Funding is track eight and this refers to the various avenues that can be explored in funding peace work. Track nine is the media, communication and public opinion, which are essential structures in building peace. From the perspective of Multi-track diplomacy, each of these Tracks brings into the peace process its unique resources, values, approaches and discipline to form a synergy for peace, non-violent change and social stability. In this book we have focused mainly on Tracks one and two. Notes & References: 1The partnership between the Government and Civil Society on conflict mitigation efforts has been kick-started by the IPCR, which has formed a bridge with a number of groups for a wide range of cross-cutting activities in conflict prevention and management. Among the outcomes, are the 2002 SCA and the Framework for Mainstreaming Peace building in development published in 2006. 2Local NGOs like CRESNET, AAPW, CEPID, etc., have conducted specific studies in different parts of the country over the years and have built on the findings in their interventions in various local conflicts. Adedeji, Adebayo (1999) Comprehending and Mastering African Conflicts: The Search for Sustainable Peace and Good 28

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Governance (ed.), London: Zed Books. Adekanye, J. B. (1995) “Structural Adjustment, Democratisation, and Rising Ethnic Tensions in Africa”, Development and Change, Volume 26 (2), pp.355-374. Albert, I.O. (2001) Building Peace, Advancing Democracy, Ibadan: John Archers. Ashmore, R. D., Jussim, L. and Wilder, D. (2001) Social Identity, intergroup conflict and conflict reduction (ed.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Avruch, K. and Black, P. W. (1991), “The Culture Question and Conflict Resolution”, Peace and Change, 16 (1): 22-45. Avruch, K. (1998), Culture and Conflict Resolution, Washington, DC: USIP. Boer, Wiebe (2000) “To build a nation where peace and justice shall reign: A report on OTI Nigeria Conflict Resolution Initiatives” December. Bush, K. (2000) “The Logic of PCIA” Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA), Colombo, Newsletter Volume IV/Issue VI, November/December 2000. Bush, R.A.B. and Folger, J.P. (1994) The Promise of Meditation, San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass Inc. Publishers. Fryer, M. (2003; 5) “Life as a Conflict Resolution Training Development Officer”, Peace Studies News, Issue 33, Autumn: Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford. Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (2003), Strategic Conflict Assessment: Consolidated and Zonal Reports. Leonhardt, Manuela (2001) Ownership, Purposes and Approaches Towards a Unified PCIA Methodology, in The Berghof Handbook for Conflict Transformation, November 2001, Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict M a n a g e m e n t ( h t t p : / / w w w. b e r g h o f handbook.net/leonhardt/s2.htm accessed on 27/12/2003). Lloyd, P. (1966) The new elite of Tropical Africa: Studies presented and discussed at the sixth International African Seminar (ed.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lijphart, A. (1989) “The power-sharing approach” in Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies, Montville, J.V. (ed.), Lexington: Lexington Books. Maier, Karl (2000) This House has fallen: Midnight in .

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Nigeria, New York: Public Affairs, xvii. Marshall, W. et al. (2001) Future Directions for USAID Support to Conflict Mitigation in Nigeria, Burlington: ARD McDonald, John W. (2003), “Multi-Track Diplomacy” in Beyond Intractability, Burges, G. And Burges H. (Eds.), Boulder: University of Colorado. Nordlinger, E.A. (1972) Conflict Regulation in Divided Societies, Cambridge MA: Harvard Centre for International Affairs. Osaghae, Eghosa E. (2001) “The Role and Function of Research in Divided Societies: The Case of Africa” in Researching Violently Divided Societies, Marie Smyth and Gillian Robinson (eds.), London: Pluto Press. Osaghae, Eghosa E. (2002 ) “Regulating Conflicts in Nigeria”, Peace Review 14 (2): 217-224. Oshita, O. O. (1993), Human Nature and the Unity of Science (unpublished), Ph.D Thesis, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Otite, O. and Albert, I.O. (1999) Community Conflicts in Nigeria: Management, Resolution and Transformation, Ibadan: Spectrum Books. Reychler, Luc (2002) Report of Initial Conflict Impact Assessment, MPP3 EU, Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers, 23 January. Richmond, O. P. (2002) Maintaining Order: Making Peace, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Ryan, Stephen (1995) Ethnic Conflict and International Relations (second edition), Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing Company Limited. Sklar, R. (1963) Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an emergent African nation, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Vuco, Ivana (2001) Conflict Resolution and Human Rights in Conflict Areas, Medford: Centre for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution. Wolpe, Howard (1974) Urban Politics in Nigeria: A study of Port Harcourt, Berkeley: University of California Press. Zartman, William (1995) Governance as Conflict Management: Politics in West Africa, Brookings.

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Chapter 3

VIOLENT CONFLICT AS A WEAPON OF (MASS) DISTRACTION

Nigeria has experienced a disturbing wave of episodic but persistent violent conflict since May 1999. We argue here that many of the violent social conflicts in the country originate from diversionary ploys or face-saving explanations of elite inertia and failure to provide for community needs. It is also argued that the elites, as conflict actors, often deploy conflict as a deliberate weapon of social distraction from the perennial issues of denial of basic needs, mass poverty, deprivation and the marginalisation of individuals and groups from the mainstream decision-making processes. The hang-over of the political economy of colonialism and military rule and the weakness of government and civil society institutions are also blamed for the deployment of conflict as a weapon of mass distraction in the country. This Chapter calls for the mainstreaming of peace building and conflict sensitivity into socio-economic policies in the country, if Nigeria is to continue to survive, and grow as a viable political unit. We shall identify and analyse four of the factors implicated in the instrumental use to which conflict disorder has been put in Nigeria. These factors - historical (colonial) legacy, basic needs, elite manipulation, and economic and political conditions contain vital signposts for comprehending conflict causation in Nigeria. Researchers have advanced various reasons for Nigeria's recent susceptibility to violent conflict (Otite 1999; Albert 2001; IPCR 2003). Many of the analyses of the violent conflicts in Nigeria attribute the upsurge in these negative antagonisms to the contest for scarce resources controlled and distributed exclusively by the federal government. This is exacerbated by the overall decline in access to opportunities, corruption, weak institutions, shrinking resources level and structural inequities, which generate unprecedented tension in the socio-economic

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and political realms. Political ethnicisation has become one of the potent vehicles for conveying discontent and mobilising support by parties in different groups and interests. Otite's diagnosis is particularly informative as it attributes conflicts to natural and man-made cleavages (Otite 1999; 337). He writes: Natural membership of ethnic groups and occupational specialisations threatened by the expanding interests of other multiple users in the same or adjoining ecological zones, surviving administrative attributes of colonialism, states and their political administrative activities, religious practices and fanaticism, expected divergence in the identification and perception of the use of limited resources, etc., provide for the emergence of conflicts.

Otite captures the historical element in conflict but somehow minimises the negative role of the Nigerian elite who manipulates innocuous group differences for personal advantages. Consequently, the class dimension of conflict, whereby the elite perpetually feeds on the ignorance and poverty of the masses, is not adequately reflected in his analyses. In other words, the problem of conflict mitigation in Nigeria is intimately linked to the level of disempowerment of the ordinary citizen. For example, the political, cultural, economic and informational disempowerment of communities in conflict exacerbates the perception by one group of another as the cause of its marginalisation or underdevelopment. As these negative perceptions persist, the Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission (HRVIC) chaired by Justice Oputa1 noted the tendency for every group in Nigeria to accuse the others of marginalising it, adding that it had become difficult to say who was the subject and object of marginalisation (HRVIC Report, 2002). In many cases, communal identity is only a façade for packaging purely mundane grievances of parties who are members of communal groups. Arguably, not all the conflicts that occurred in Nigeria during the last six years could result in extreme cleavages that assume negative association between commitment to the subgroup and the national identity. It has thus been argued 32

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that, “Nigeria has a typical socio-territorial space in which the elements of consensus, co-operation, and conflict, function to promote its continuity as a social system” (Otite 1999; 338). Most of the recent conflicts are localised as well as circumscribed around the narrow needs of actors and do not directly threaten national cohesion. However, whether this conclusion is valid in the longer term is questionable. The fact remains that this ascription of self-regulatory social dynamics cannot replace a conscious and systematic effort in peace building and conflict resolution. Conflict is an inevitable byproduct of social diversity, and it afflicts both heterogeneous and homogeneous societies. It is therefore our duty to address the aberrant or deviant behaviours of conflict actors as well as the conditions that precipitate them if we desire a change. The legacy of colonialism on conflict Obviously, we cannot historicize conflict in Nigeria without implicating colonialism. Thus, the legacy of colonialism is implicated in the complex social forces that have impacted on violent conflict in post-independent Nigeria (IPCR 2003; Otite 1999; 337). Boer (2001) presents an illuminating scenario in which the expectations of the colonised included the belief that 'the white man' would help them solve all their inter-tribal conflicts (mostly over land use). Boer (2001; 14) recounts an exchange between a local chief and a colonial official, Colonel Gerald Adams, where the former declared, “…we were told by the white man who came up the river in his boat that the white men would settle all our quarrels and do our fighting for us.” One lesson for stakeholders of conflict resolution from the case of the dashed expectations of the local chief referred to above is that parties to a conflict must brace up and get involved in resolving their own conflict themselves. Third parties can facilitate the resolution of a conflict but cannot be as committed as the parties themselves. There is a common local Nigerian saying that metaphorically reminds third parties that they could not weep more than the bereaved.

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However, and quite unfortunately, many conflict intervention programmes appear insensitive to the role of history in conflict and fail to adopt a conceptual frame that captures historical determinants of modern conflicts. Precolonial societies may have had their own genre of social conflicts, but the theory and practice of colonialism introduced new and compelling variables by compressing previously distinct communities, and eventually amalgamating regions with diverse cultural experiences to constitute Nigeria. In addition, the mental torture and material exploitation that accompanied colonialism helped to distort the psycho-cultural and material environments of the people (Rodney, 1972; Davidson, 1992), occasioning personal and group disorientation. Many early Nigerians (Africans) became bogged down by personal conflict and identity crises, forcing some to take refuge in new forms of spirituality, embracing Christianity in the south and Islam in the north. It could thus be argued that, across the continent, the traditional religionists who remained faithful to their beliefs were those whose coping strategies against the alienation engendered by the colonial experience were most effective. The modus operandi of colonialism was to demonise the precolonial societies, their structures and institutions by labelling them as primitive and making them distasteful to the colonised. At independence, this fallacy was repackaged and delivered to the native successors of the colonial bureaucrats. This deliberate political strategy discredited traditional values and replaced them with exotic ones. Having been alienated from their traditions, the response of the locals became predictably procolonial (Davidson, 1992; 27), thus alienating themselves from their own values and identity. Entrapped in cognitive dissonance, early leaders came to believe that “…Africa needed to be saved, and salvation must come from outside the continent” (Davidson, 27). Consequently, they jettisoned communalism, which was based on indigenous values, and embraced individualism. As a political fact, colonialism involved a systematic estrangement of the locals by demonising their ontology and disrupting their traditional governance institutions. Herbst (1997:133) flaws arguments that denigrate non-western models in preference for western ones as borne out 34

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of the ideological fixation and “intellectual log-jam” that arises from the fear of non-western alternatives. It is noteworthy that central figures in western political thought benefited from ancient African civilisations that served as pilgrimages for learning for many years (Bernal 1987; Onyewuenyi 1993). In Nigeria, the Obas (in Yoruba dominated areas of the West) and emirs (in the Hausa-Fulani dominated areas of the North), had institutionalised authority. In the South East, the Efiks of old Calabar relied on the traditional kinship institution for transactions and treaties with foreign partners that predated the 1648 treaty of Westphalia, yet the latter is believed in the west to be the origin of the sovereign state idea. It has been noted that, “There were indeed a good number of traditional rulers whose positions predated colonialism, some by hundreds of years” (Boer 2001; 16).

The degenerate images and constructions used in mirroring their values eroded the feeling of authenticity among the natives and intensified the expectation of help from the outside. As a carefully orchestrated outcome, the post-colonial state was therefore skewed to perpetrate local divisions, freeze identities and unsympathetically break with the cultural and political gains of the pre-colonial era. By bringing previously separate groups together in the absence of a careful social integration process, colonial authorities sowed the seeds of conflict destined to haunt societies for a long time. In the short term, fragile inter-group cohesion and polarised communities helped to divert the people's attention from colonial exploitation. Herbst (1997; 121) captures the ensuing dilemma when he states that postindependent African leaders “had a profound interest in maintaining the nation-states they inherited from the Europeans because there was no guarantee, if they began to experiment with different types of political organisation, that they would continue to be in power.” The deconstruction of traditional values and the failure of the state to process the basic needs promised in the new independent constitution - freedoms, human and material security and political and economic prosperity - continue to fuel tensions and eventually, violent 35

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conflict. Modelski (1972; 322) writes of the opaque motive of colonialism, “[c]ommercial enterprise either planted the flag or followed it, the one thing it never did was to go afield without it.” From this economic perspective, it was inevitable that Africa should become part of the global investment of Europe following the Berlin Conference of 1884-5. As Davidson (1992; 179) puts it, on the eve of independence, the colonial office sought for “suitably convenient African nation-statist leadership” that suited its interest. Thus, neither colonialism nor its officials pretended to act like Rawls' people in the original position who stayed behind the veil of ignorance and took decisions indifferently (Rawls; 1973). Lord Lugard confessed to using revenue from the south of Nigeria to subsidise the administration in the north. This colonial fiscal policy has been alluded to by actors in the ongoing resource control conflict between the federal and state governments. Though the nationalists advocated a break with colonialism, they desired immediate political independence first, to be followed later by economic independence. In essence, they preferred to cross the political bridge first and to use this as a springboard for fixing other problems subsequently.2 The case of Nigeria is a reminder of the problems that still require to be fixed to achieve peace, stability and development, years after obtaining political independence. Basic needs and conflict Satisfaction of the basic needs of society has for a long time been construed as the navigational point for constructive social policies. Galtung and Wirak (1976), define needs as “…something, the satisfaction of which if not met, provokes disintegration of the human being.” Burton (1979), Galtung (1980), and Azar (1990) recognise non-fulfilment of basic human needs as the source of social conflict. Needs are fundamental human requirements distinct from wants or values, whose satisfaction is “essential to the organisation and survival of society” as well as the “development and functioning of its component parts, individuals and groups” (Burton 1979; 59). For Burton, individuals could decide to be uncooperative 36

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members of the group if they were denied those conditions or opportunities/ needs that are essential to their development (Burton 1979; 59). Conflict intervention is therefore the effort to forestall the threat of disintegration instigated by the denial of needs. Unlike the scenario in the Biblical parable of the lost sheep, conflict prevention aspires to adopt measures that would stop the sheep getting lost at all, by ensuring the availability of green pasture. Conflict resolution and peace building interventions help to fulfil expectations and consolidate the needs of individuals and groups. This allays their fears of the future and dissuades them from resorting to anti-social behaviours for self-help at great cost to themselves and to their society. Since political independence in 1960, military dictatorships have dominated Nigeria's political space, interspersed with brief periods of relative civilian rule in 1960-65, 1979-83, a blend of Military and Civilian rule in 1991-93. The longest period of civil rule is that from May of 1999 to date. Weak civil institutions, corruption, erosion of basic liberties, moribund judiciary, insecurity, underdevelopment and socio-political instability have characterised the country's existence from one regime to another. From inception in May 1999, the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo acknowledged that it was challenged by the near absence of social infrastructure, rising mass unemployment, especially of a restive youth population, a prostrate economy and palpable poverty. Thus, the failure of past governments to provide for the basic needs of the population has created the mass disillusionment, apathy and frustration that fuel pockets of conflicts across the country. It is the nature of military dictatorships that they shun political obligations and are not persuaded by the basic need argument since they came to power by forcibly seizing power rather than through popular consent. In contrast, democracies have an obligation to meet the basic needs of the people in order to sustain their legitimacy. One of the important, but less recognisable needs of the Nigerian people today is that of clinically re-orientating the hearts and minds of millions of citizens towards democratic relevance. The political elites have deliberately been slow in recognising this need, and are unable to meet the chief criterion for its satisfaction, which is leadership

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by good example. Worse still, the youth that constitute the engine of social activism in Nigeria today were born and nurtured under military dictatorships and so seem to lack the strategic vision to positively mobilise to transcend the debased roles assigned to them within elite controlled politics. This inertia contributes to their vulnerability, making it easier to misuse them such as in perpetrating thuggery, snatching of ballot boxes and political assassinations. Elite dominance and complicity in conflict As noted above, the elite remain visible as the parasitic drivers or conductors of the political and economic levers in the Nigerian society. The percentage of elite in Nigeria with positively creative energies does not appear to be significant in any social analysis of the elite phenomenon in the country. The instrumental deployment of conflict in Nigeria can be understood by analysing elite attitudes and their rationalisations of the political behaviour patronage-seeking as a gateway for economic prosperity. This is attributable to the dominant prebendal culture of socio-political engagement in the public arena, where the elites think, act and speak in a vocabulary of patronage and acquisition (Joseph 1979). The Report of the Strategic Conflict Assessment (SCA) of Nigeria notes how the monocultural oil economy and the concentration of economic resources, mainly oil, in the government, encourage the prebendal attitude of the elite (IPCR 2003; 20). It is suggested that this over-centralization is detrimental to the socio-economic development of Nigeria, as the elites continue to dominate and manipulate the dialectic of conflict to their own advantage. As the elites renege in their promise to provide basic infrastructure for the populace, they create diversions by resorting to buck-passing and conflict- instigating tactics. The executive, legislature and judiciary at the federal, state and local government levels often trade blames, sometimes in an effort to explain away the unsatisfactory performance of government. A typical example is the political overheat to which the Nigerian polity was subjected between 2001 and 2002 as a result of a ‘blame-trading’ conflict between the Executive and Legislature. 38

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Valuable resources were channelled towards formal and informal interventions aimed at resolving this ExecutiveLegislature conflict at the expense of investment in pro-people development. The result was a needless drain on the economic resources of the country in mediating between pockets of the ruling class in the Executive and the Legislative arms of government. Economic and political factors in conflict Conflict in Nigeria almost always wears an economic garment although this may not be apparent all the time. This is not surprising because of the level of underdevelopment and widespread poverty. What is often lost whenever a conflict brews is the question of whose economic interest the prosecution of a conflict actually serves. Is the conflict serving the interest of the potential actors (victims) in the theatre of violence or that of the elite who fund and fuel the violence from the comfort of their homes? The point of departure for conflict in Nigeria is often that some individuals in a group, usually members of the elite class, believe rightly or wrongly, that they deserve a fair share of certain advantages on the basis of which they mobilise the group towards securing these. This may be employment, political position, revenue allocation or other advantages of social co-operation. At inter community level, the struggle for chieftaincy enthronement and access to land or the royalties accruing from it are common avenues for conflict. The violent conflict between the Tiv and their neighbours in Nassarawa state; Ijaw and Itsekiri in Delta State; and that involving Oluasiri, Soku and Elem-Sangama in Rivers and Bayelsa states, are typical examples.3 These community conflicts often give rise to a form of the so-called indigene-settler conflict, which manifests mainly when individuals or groups that perceive themselves as losing out in a contest for resources, privileges or positions, cling to primordial sentiments to win support. Earlier manifestation of the indigene-settler conflict surfaced when some state governments began a policy of employing other Nigerian citizens on contract basis. This was an early warning sign to the effect that the concept of citizenship in Nigeria needed a 39

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pragmatic reconfiguration to secure some practical guarantees for all citizens irrespective of state of origin, birth or creed. 4 In the Niger Delta, the economic and political factors in the conflict are much more complicated because of the actors involved (oil companies, communities, federal government, local and national elite) and the issues involved (demand for community recognition, community development, contracts, employment, unfulfilled promises, claims over land ownership, and environmental damage). Militant youth in these areas consider the leadership of their elite and traditional chiefs as compromised and set about filling the perceived vacuum by directly engaging the oil companies on the one hand, and the government on the other. This scenario causes rapid turnover of elite leadership, a situation that is inimical to the nurturing of leadership capacity, precipitating social dislocation, tension and violence. In a situation of this nature, violent conflict may begin to take a life of its own as a constant phenomenon. The efforts of NGOs and IGOs in the Niger Delta notwithstanding, the objective conditions that spark conflict are just about being constructively attended to by the government. The thriving business of oil and the availability of sophisticated Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALWs) have worked in favour of youth militancy and the projection of militias as economic and political entities, constituting a huge national and international security issue. The Niger Delta, more than anywhere else in Nigeria, is facing the challenges of securitised development. From the socio-economic and political angles, conflict situations in Nigeria create a diversion from the substantive issues of providing for the basic needs of the people. While governments at the various levels express concern over the problem of violent conflict, many leaders go about the business of governance on the notion that conflicts will always resolve themselves. Failure to take measures that proactively address the oppressive nature of governmental structures on minority groups complicates the economic and political angles of conflict. This is what Galtung refers to as structural violence and it widens the gulf between government and communities on the one hand, and between competing communities on the other. Where effort was made to address the conflicts in parts of Nigeria, the results of Ad Hoc Judicial Committees hardly 40

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received serious attention of the government. Best (1996) has listed some instances of non-implementation of the Reports of Administrative and Judicial Panels on conflicts in northern Nigeria. Best (1996) rightly observes that the enormous social deficits associated with this governance inertia include the human cost, which is as a result of affected communities relapsing into violence. The logic is that when criminals or violent groups can predict government inaction in response to their activities, the tendency is for them to intensify their obnoxious behaviour. Nigeria has been an unfortunate victim of weak governance and judicial institutions and is replete with instances of official inaction or inappropriate responses by government in respect of the Reports of Judicial and Administrative Panels on conflict involving huge human and material losses.

Notes & References: 1Two weeks after assuming office, President Olusegun Obasanjo set up the Human Rights Violations Investigations Commission (HRVIC), headed by Justice Chukwudifu Oputa, to look into allegations of abuse of human rights in Nigeria. Its Terms of Reference covered abuses that occurred between January 15, 1966, when the first military coup happened in Nigeria, and May 28 1999, the day before Obasanjo was sworn in as civilian President. The HRVIC began public hearing on October 24, 2000 and submitted its report in 2002. 2Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana popularised the injunction “seek ye first the political kingdom and all other things shall be added unto you.” Nkrumah's Ghana gained independence in 1957 and this saying was to become the symbol of the independence movement in Africa. 3Each of the conflicts mentioned here began with the root causes confined to a narrow realm then spreading to other sectors, and in a typical 'dung-beetle fashion', builds into a big ball of conflict with multiple actors and a chain of causes and effects. 4 A presidential committee on citizenship and indigeneship was set up by President Obasanjo to examine the tensions and

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contradictions in the articulation of Nigerian citizenship and make recommendations that will help to resolve the basis of indigene-settler conflict. Albert, I. O. (2001) Building Peace, Advancing Democracy: Experience with Third party interventions in Nigeria's conflicts (ed.), Ibadan: Petraf/John Archers. Azar, E. (1990) The Management of Protracted Social Conflict: Theory & cases, Worcester: Darmouth Publications. Bernal, Martin (1987), Black Athena: Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization, volume 1, London: Free Association Books. Best, S.G. (1996) Religion, politics and conflict in northern Nigeria: an historical analysis with two case studies, University of Bradford: Department of Peace Studies. Boer, Wiebe (2001) “A perspective on the Post-colonial roots of identity and conflict” in Building Peace, Advancing Democracy, Albert, I. O. (ed.), Ibadan: John Archers. Burton, J. W. (1979) Deviance, Terrorism and War: The process of solving unsolved Social and Political problems, London: Martin Robson. Davidson, Basil (1992) The Black man's burden, Oxford: James Currey. Galtung, J. & Wirak, A. (1976) “Human Needs, Human Rights & Theory of Development”, Paper No. 37, Conflict Peace Research Chair Oslo. Galtung, J. (1980) “The Basic Need Approach”, in Human Needs: A contribution to the current debate, Lederer, K. Galtung, J. and Antal, D. (eds.), Cambridge: Gunn & Heinn. Federal Government of Nigeria (2002) Report of the Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission (HRVIC), Abuja. Herbst, J. (1996/1997) “Responding to State Failure in Africa” International Security, Vol. 21 (3), pp.120-144. Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (2003) Strategic Conflict Assessment: Consolidated and Zonal Reports, Abuja: IPCR. Joseph, R. (1991) Prebendal Politics in Nigeria, Ibadan: Spectrum Books. Modelski, G. (1972) Principles of World Politics, New York: Free Press. Onyewuenyi, Innocent (1993), The African origin of Greek Philosophy, Nsukka: University of Nigeria Press. 42

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Otite, O. and Albert, I.O. (1999) Community Conflicts in Nigeria: Management, Resolution and Transformation, Ibadan: Spectrum Books. Rawls, John (1973) A Theory of Justice, London: Oxford University Press. Report of the Human Rights Violation Investigation Commission (2002), Abuja, Nigeria. Rodney, Walter (1972) London: Bogle-L'ouverture Publications.

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Chapter 4 CONFLICT INTERVENTIONS IN NIGERIA

Why conflict intervention? There is an argument urging a gradual transition from the metaphor of conflict resolution to transformation. This has deep and practical implications for the human attitude towards social conflict, and therefore, the object of our intervention. To intervene in a conflict presupposes the belief that it is desirable to facilitate the harmonisation of the (potentially) opposing interests of the parties by addressing the underlying issues. Lederach warns that this may mean discarding with the status quo since the conflict may have been precipitated by (undesirable) conditions that required change or transformation (Lederach 2003; 28-31). His worry is that the logic of conflict resolution is self-limiting by focusing on ending a conflict as something undesirable but not on enthroning something desirable in its place (Ibid. 33). Among the things to scrutinise prior to intervening in a conflict are, (i) the criteria for intervening, (ii) sources of sponsorship, (iii) agenda-setting, (iv) geo-strategic significance, and (v) issues and parties involved. All these are critical to how the intervention gets done and what comes out of the input of resources. Richmond (2002; 151) outlines actors that could be involved in conflict intervention in a civil context to include “government, professional organisations, the business community, churches [mosques and temples], media, private citizens, training and educational institutes, activists and funding organisations.” Depending on their expertise and orientation these groups have the potential of constructive or destructive involvement, thus mitigating or exacerbating conflict in the environment where they operate. Thus, at different levels and with regards to different issues, actors can either promote or obstruct constructive change processes or even instigate energies that violate social relations, leading to conflict. This chapter presents a panoramic view of the pattern

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of conflict intervention in Nigeria and discusses some of the concerns arising therefrom. The reason commonly advertised for intervening in a conflict is to disperse centrifugal tensions and redirect energies towards the promotion of peace. Intervening in a conflict is thus a function of several factors, actors and issues, all of which have ramifications on the national agenda for conflict mitigation. In this regard, some key factors, issues, and concerns affect Nigeria's conflict profile and contribute to the definitive character of social conflict in the country. Proactive conflict intervention aims at turning potentially destructive energies of actors into opportunities for building and consolidating life-enhancing ends. Augsburger (1992; 5) maintains that “conflict is essential to, ineradicable from, and inevitable in human life; and the source, cause and process of conflict can be turned from life-destroying to life-building ends.” Recognising this fact, the prospective interveners, whether individuals, non-governmental organisations or governments, must consider their own viability in terms of accessible human and material resources and their comparative advantage, before embarking on a mission to manage or resolve a conflict. Since resources are not unlimited, intervention in conflict almost always tends to be constrained by how much human and material inputs are available for deployment in any single intervention. For maximum results, it might be useful for interveners to assess the totality of a situation so as to determine the most appropriate entry point and the best time to engage. Some Elements of Conflict intervention in Nigeria Until recently, conflict intervention in Nigeria was fashioned exclusively after the reactive model. Consequently, intervening in a conflict situation was equated with the use of security forces to quell violent unrests that had escalated by way of claiming lives or that considerably threatened law and order. It also appeared that the government was a lone player in mainstream conflict intervention activities. The result has been that where they were deployed, most government interventions proved ill-timed, taking place when the conflicts were either full-blown or had escalated into violence. There was neither 46

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emphasis on early warning and response strategies nor conflict mapping and analysis that would help unveil the root causes of the conflict and present a composite view of the problem. The power approach, which usually informed government response to conflict, undermined the social history, setting and structural factors that inevitably contributed to the causes and course of conflict. Thus, many government interventions were costlier, more delicate and eventually yielded disappointingly meagre results. When we compare the use of power as a tool under the colonial era with what existed during the military dictatorships that ruled Nigeria up to 1999, the impact on the people is similar. Both were hinged on an occupation mentality and driven by the desire for the primitive accumulation of wealth. Diagram 1 below illustrates the structure and pattern of decision-making that prevail when power flows exclusively from the elite to the bottom rung of society: Diagram 1:

The arrows in Diagram 1 indicate a downward movement of peace and conflict interventions from top to bottom. It is essentially a supply-led process that excludes popular input by the majority of the people found in the middle and bottom segments of society. Expectedly, there are several problems that are associated with interventions modelled after Diagram 1. On the other hand, Diagram 2 below shows a pattern that remedies the short-comings of Diagram 1. Here, the arrows indicate a bottom-top grassroots mobilisation of the intervention processes.

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Diagram 2:

What Diagram 2 shows is that conflict interventions are about the people and the processes must not only begin with them, but led by them. In contrast to Diagram 1, Diagram 2 is an example of a demand-driven, bottom-top social interventions model. In this era of global governance and inclusiveness, interventions patterned after Diagram 2 are far more sustainable than those modelled after Diagram 1. The former category is people-led while the latter consist of events and activities foisted on the majority who are mere recipient/ beneficiaries excluded from the decision-making processes. In Nigeria, development interventions have for many years been top-down. The result is that the majority of the people in the bottom rung of society were never really taken into account in the past. With the ongoing processes of democratisation, this can be changed by empowering the grassroots through participation in socioeconomic and political activities and programmes. It is common logic that people-based and demand-driven interventions are more likely to achieve sustainable outcomes than the supply-led ones. At present, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) stand a good chance of assisting governments in creating conditions that enhance peace by “promoting peace constituencies, including cross-cutting segments of people from different sectors of the civil society involved in the development of sustainable peace” (Richmond 2002; 151). NGO involvement in conflict regulation since 1999 shows that different civil society 48

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groups can create networks for action and help to focus public attention towards peaceful social relations. But this is a development that is still unfolding as many NGOs are still building the capacity of their personnel to engage social conflicts constructively. Below, we examine the infrastructure for conflict intervention in Nigeria under four sub-headings - Traditional mechanisms for conflict resolution, government approach to conflict management, conflict interventions by nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and the role of international governmental organisations (IGOs) in conflict mitigation. (a) Traditional mechanisms for conflict resolution Any evaluation of the infrastructure for conflict intervention in Nigeria must begin with an acknowledgement of the mechanisms adopted by local folks in managing and resolving community conflicts at the grassroots level. Sometimes referred to as African Traditional Mechanisms (ATM), these pragmatic, bottom-top approaches to conflict resolution provided the basis for the sustained cultural achievements of traditional societies. Although non-state traditional mechanisms have been in use prior to the configuration of the Nigerian state, it was only recently that NGOs gained the respectability of government as partners in mediating in conflict. The historical pattern shows that colonialism used traditional rulers and institutions to facilitate resource exploitation and taxation, then the Nigerian military politicised these institutions and used them to extract local support for its meddling in governance. It was the military that made enthronement to traditional rulership stools materially attractive and politically competitive. Other grassroots platforms like the council of elders, women's organisations, age grades, titleholders, oracles and cults, among others, are relatively apolitical and continue to play positive roles as grassroots interveners in community conflicts. It must be acknowledged that the social structures that sustained traditional mechanisms for conflict management have diminished in significance in the context of the cosmopolitan

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society. Critics also consider the procedures employed in these mechanisms as arbitrary although they recognise the heuristic significance for the communities that use them. For instance, the councils of elders and chiefs, ancestral angels, deities/oracles/shrines, age grades, churches, etc., that occupied key roles in the settlement of disputes in the past have come under the onslaught of neo-liberal insistence on the primacy of individual rights as opposed to community rights and privileges. The result is that decisions by these informal assemblies (elders' council, and council of chiefs, age grades, oracles, etc.) are increasingly difficult to enforce since the original contexts within which they operated hardly obtain today. Faced with the clash between tradition and modernity local folks are themselves becoming disdainful of their once honoured traditional methods of dispute settlement. Disputes settled through the propitiation of ancestral spirits, the council of chiefs or elders' council are often appealed against in the formal court system for violating common law principles. This challenge to traditional mechanisms for conflict resolution has been complicated by the absence of research that would help integrate aspects of the best practices of the traditional approaches with western methods of conflict management. The abandonment of ATMs based on the fact that some of its practices fall short of the requirements of justice is a classic case of throwing the baby with the bath water. Traditional communities are thus disempowered since they are unable to apply the best practices of their home-grown mechanisms in tackling the conflicts that have been a burden for Nigeria for sometime now. (b) Government intervention in conflict Government response to conflict has been dominated by the power approach. The government always wielded the big stick by sending armed police or the army to quell a conflict. This was wrongly considered the most effective way to resolve a conflict. Thus, for a long time, governments in Nigeria saw no point in investing in preventive or proactive conflict intervention. Functionaries of government had wrongly felt 50

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that investment in governance must be in the tangible realm, that is, budgeting for the construction of market stalls, culverts, bridges, hospitals, and roads. Based on this scale of value, building a culvert to link two warring communities has priority over a programme of in-depth research into the root causes of the violence between the communities. No attention was given to proactive studies aimed at transforming a conflict situation and forestalling its escalation into violence. The Nigeria Police Force, the Military and other security organs were the agencies that dealt with all conflict disorders in the country. This period was characterised by the reactive model which responded to conflict only when it had escalated. The use of Judicial Commissions of Enquiry, the Police and Army thus dominated past government response to conflict management in Nigeria. Judicial, Administrative Panels or Commissions had been set up by past governments to address some of the recurring social conflicts that still challenge the country today. One of these was the Justice Mamman Nasir Boundary Commission of 1976. Despite the submissions of this commission, boundary conflicts continued to afflict many parts of the federation arising from the creation and location of headquarters of chiefdoms, wards, and local government councils. Also, Justice Ibidapo Obe judicial panel's work on the Ife-Modakeke conflict did not abate the intra-ethnic conflict between the two communities in Ile-Ife. The same can be said of Justice Jumai Sankey Panel of Enquiry, which examined the Mangu-Bokkos conflict; Justice Nnaemeka Agu's Judicial Commission of Enquiry into the Warri conflict; Justice Idoko Judicial Commission of Enquiry into the Ijaw and Itsekiri conflict; Justice Aniagolu Tribunal on the 1980 Maitastine riots in Kano; Justice Babalakin Judicial Commission of Enquiry into the conflict in Tafawa Balewa; the Justice Rahila Cudjoe Commission of Enquiry into the Zangon-Kataf crisis; and several administrative panels raised in response to violent conflict. Apart from the fact that Judicial Panels are reactive and serve as instruments for damage control, government response to their reports has been lame. In many of the cases where judicial panels or commissions were set up, government either ignored the wisdom of their recommendations or embarked on

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selective implementation thereby creating room for the reoccurrence of the conflicts. In yet other cases, Panels compromised and turned in blatantly partisan reports that ignored the root causes of the crisis. This ambiguous role of government in most of the conflicts has led to the perception of the government as “the cause and the settler or manager of conflicts” (Otite 1999; 344). Consequently, when an assessment is made of the role of government in conflict in Nigeria it would be discovered that since independence government has caused more conflict by its actions or inactions than it ever settled, managed or resolved. With the establishment of the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, the Federal Government made a calculated decision for a paradigm shift. (c) Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR) The Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR) was established in February, 2000. Until the creation of IPCR, governments in Nigeria might have considered investment in conflict prevention similar to asking a teenager to take up a pension plan, the benefits of which are buried in the very distant future. The IPCR as a non-partisan conflict research institute set up by the government has the mandate to conduct in-depth research into the root causes of domestic and regional conflicts. Apart from serving as a think tank for the Nigerian government, the Institute works hard to unveil the root causes of conflict in different parts of the country. IPCR personnel are also involved in mediating in community conflicts as well as facilitating the resolution of conflicts by parties themselves. A number of developments were responsible for the decision of the government to set up IPCR. One of these was the palpable feeling of disillusion by the people against the failures and disappointment of past governments. This was demonstrated in the number of violent conflicts that the new government witnessed at inception in 1999. It was immediately obvious to government that widespread violent conflicts would impact negatively on development and obstruct national integration efforts. With the number and success of peace operations that Nigeria had been involved in, the country needed to demonstrate both her leadership in institution52

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building and commitment to peace in Africa with the establishment of IPCR. The message of Nigeria was that the era had come when African countries should become proactive in handling domestic and regional conflicts. The government realised the strategic importance of creating the first government-funded agency for Peace in Africa, to deal with conflicts in a way that is not only proactive but also consistent with the democratisation processes in the region. With the setting up of IPCR, the orientation of government towards conflict intervention began to change in favour of proactive research to uncover the root causes of conflicts in Nigeria. The Institute has employed proactive and disinterested social research methodologies in its interventions in different conflict situations in the country. With funding secured from the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), IPCR researched into the constitutional approach to the indigenesettler conflict in Nigeria. Aware of the mutual impact of development and conflict, the Institute has developed and disseminated a toolkit for mainstreaming peace building and conflict-sensitivity in development programming and implementation in Nigeria. IPCR is also working on a project on the formulation of a national peace policy for Nigeria which will circumscribe the country's contribution to domestic and regional peace and security within a national strategic vision. IPCR is also mandated to address the root causes of conflict in the African region to complement Nigeria's leadership role in Africa. The Institute has reached some understanding with some organs of the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS) in specific areas of collaboration. In the six years of its existence IPCR has been working hard to mainstream proactive conflict intervention into the policy network and the reform processes of government. IPCR has collaborated with a number of NGOs, IGOs, INGOs and multilateral institutions in striving to fulfil her domestic and regional mandate. In 2001 IPCR partnered with the Academic Associate Peace Works (AAPW) to troubleshoot in the conflict over the ownership of the location of the Liquefied Natural Gas Plant (LNG) involving Elem-Sangama, Soku, and Oluasiri communities. The Institute funded and jointly facilitated a conflict Transformation Workshop for youth leaders

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of these communities, spread across Rivers and Bayelsa states in the Niger Delta (IPCR/AAPW 2001). Apart from conducting fact-finding and conflict sensitization visits to various parts of the country, IPCR has established a databank on domestic and regional conflict flashpoints. IPCR's salutary achievements include the successful networking with stakeholders in peace research and conflict resolution in Nigeria from 2001 to 2003. With the encouragement and support of DFID, UNDP, USAID, and the World Bank, IPCR conducted a Strategic Conflict Assessment (SCA) for Nigeria in 2002 and published the report in 2003. The Institute hopes that with the continued support of its partners and adequate funding by the government it would continue to promote enduring research into the changing profile of conflict causation in Nigeria. As at present, the Institute is equipping its early warning and early response situation room. IPCR is also strategising on early warning/response mechanisms, building civil society capacity for conflict resolution. The Institute is partnering with other agencies to mainstream peace education in the nation’s educational system. (d) NGOs intervention in Conflict The domination of the political space by the Nigerian military soon after independence negatively impacted on civil society development in Nigeria. Consequently, NGOs evolved slowly, only becoming relatively widespread around the 1980s. Because government response to conflict is almost always reactive, the challenge for Track II involvement in conflict interventions has been enormous during the last few years. Many non-governmental organisations have gained insights from ATMs by maintaining strategic alliances with grassroots or community based organisations (CBOs). Ironically, the traditional mechanisms for conflict resolution adopted by local informal groups remain unsung and under-researched despite their contribution to peace building in the communities. In other words, the sole task of proactive intervention in conflicts in Nigeria had been abandoned to non-governmental organisations and their sponsors. As Stewart and FitzGerald (2001) indicate, non54

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governmental organisations could easily become proxies for externally driven agendas. They posit that the “political economic objectives and constraints of donors often outweigh humanitarian objectives…” and this often contributes to the failure of NGO interventions in conflict mitigation (2001; 226). This debunks the erroneous assumption that the overriding objective of donors or sponsors is humanitarian or that they are development-oriented (Ibid.). What this means in essence is that donor-driven interventions could serve as a latch to secure or maintain a distribution of influence that serves the strategic interests of funding organisations (Stewart and FitzGerald 2001; 229). Alongside the problem of funds, local NGOs have been plagued by the paucity of conflict resolution experts, and leadership struggles. Funding has been a major problem for NGOs in the conflict resolution field. Most of the funding comes from foreign donors and the criteria for funding are sometimes difficult to meet. Often the funding comes with conditions that hamstrung the implementing organisation and makes the pursuit of the project difficult. Unfortunately, some NGOs that secured funding for conflict resolution projects did not possess the expertise required to accomplish the interventions and would not commit funds to engage the resources of experts in the field. The leadership challenge in the NGO sector has various dimensions, ranging from insincerity and lack of vision to outright corruption and mismanagement of funds.1 Though these challenges in the sector resulted in little being achieved in concrete terms, NGOs in peace and conflict resolution have certainly succeeded, in the last few years, in sensitising the public on the possibility of non-state actors engaging with conflicts by non-violent means. It goes without saying that it is the nature of human perception that an inch of failure in conflict resolution is more easily noticed than an ounce of success. It is indeed easy to see where an intervention failed by seeing the relapse of parties into quarrel or violence. But it is difficult to conclude that a conflict intervention succeeded from the criterion that former adversaries were coexisting peacefully. At least two reasons account for this; first, is because peace is often taken for granted until there is an eruption of violence, and 55

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second, because peace is more difficult to fathom from overt human behaviour. As Shakespeare noted in his Macbeth, there is no art to read the mind's construction on the face; there could be violence in the mind while we see a façade of peace. Besides, as present day global media practice shows, positive developments tend to have less potential for breaking news than negative or bleak ones. This is clearly demonstrated in the way most people have been ambushed by the so-called CNN effect.

(e) IGOs Intervention in Conflict The role of the international community in conflict intervention in Nigeria can be easily measured by the activities of international governmental (IGOs) and non-governmental organisations (INGOs) and multilateral bodies. These include the British Government's Department of International Development (DFID), United States Agency for International Development/Office of Transition Initiatives (USAID/OTI), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These organisations have contributed in funding interventions in different sectors as well as building the capacity of local personnel. USAID/OTI and DFID, for example, have been instrumental in many of the interventions by different groups across the country. Indeed, it would be unimaginable where civil society capacity in conflict management would be in Nigeria without the patronage of some of these organisations. The World Bank (under its fund for post-conflict reconstruction) and the UNDP have also contributed to invigorating conflict intervention activities in Nigeria. The Strategic Conflict Assessment (SCA) for Nigeria was conceived and nurtured through IPCR's collaboration with some of these key international development partners. Although INGOs such as the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), Action Aid and Rainforest Action Network (RAN), among others, contribute in managing conflicts of different kinds, we shall not be concerned with these here. For example, WWF in collaboration with the National Park Service was involved in conflict regulation 56

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activities among landlord communities bordering Nigeria's national park projects in the early 1990s. (f) DFID and Conflict Intervention: The activities of DFID in conflict intervention are fairly well known across the length and breadth of Nigeria. Apart from directly engaging in conflict mitigation programmes, DFID supports studies leading to the improvement of methodologies for conflict research. It maintains partnership with grassroots NGOs through which it has funded several conflict intervention projects. DFID supported the establishment of an academic linkage between the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and INCORE, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, leading to the establishment of the Centre for Conflict studies of the University of Ibadan in 2000. The DFID has thus made invaluable contributions towards capacity building in the field of conflict prevention and resolution in Nigeria. This is quite apart from the organisation's direct involvement in conflict reduction projects with grassroots organisations in different communities across Nigeria. DFID also played a key role in the planning and implementation of the SCA in Nigeria. (g) USAID/OTI and Conflict Intervention Since 1999 USAID/OTI contributions to conflict mitigation in Nigeria covered the six geopolitical zones of the country. Most of the interventions are well documented (see Albert 2001; Otite and Albert 1999). USAID/OTI Workshops have contributed immensely to the understanding of conflict behaviour in Nigeria. Many local NGOs have benefited from collaboration with USAID/OTI in their intervention in conflict. Through a series of training courses USAID/OTI has also helped to build the capacity of NGO activists and various focus groups to deal with conflict constructively. What is clear is that many peace practitioners in Nigeria today had at one time or the other been beneficiaries of the pioneering capacity building training activities of USAID/OTI on conflict regulation in Nigeria.

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(h) World Bank and Conflict Intervention The World Bank has been involved in the domestic efforts to prevent, manage and resolve conflicts in Nigeria. The postconflict reconstruction unit of the World Bank worked closely with IPCR, DFID, USAID, and UNDP to ensure the successful conduct of the strategic conflict assessment for Nigeria, the first such collaboration in Africa. It was the effective collaboration with these groups that emboldened IPCR to mobilise civil society groups in Nigeria to participate in the SCA in 2002. It is worthy of note that the World Bank funded a conceptualisation segment for the SCA at the Culture and Conflict Workshop held at Sheraton Hotel and Towers on March 18 to 19, 2002. At this forum, Dirk Reinermann of the World Bank and Claire Hickson of the DFID led some of the discussions that shaped the methodology adopted for the SCA. In terms of other inputs the World Bank’s video conferencing facilities enabled IPCR to work with desk officers in Washington simultaneously with coordinating the in-country study in Nigeria. (i) UNDP and Conflict Intervention UNDP was one of IPCR's key partners in the planning and implementation of the SCA and sat as a member of the project Advisory Board along with IPCR, DFID, USAID, and the World Bank. UNDP's keen interest in the work of he Institute was again demonstrated when the organisation coordinated funding for IPCR from the Norwegian Agency for Development (NORAD) in 2003 to 2004. In 2006 UNDP again collaborated with IPCR by funding a Capacity Building and Brainstorming Training Workshop for strategic-level stakeholders of peace in Nigeria. At present, documentation is being concluded for IPCR-UNDP collaboration project on the formulation of a draft National Peace Policy (NPP) for Nigeria. This NPP project has a direct bearing on the Report of the SCA and its outcome is to provide a policy framework for attaining the deliverables conceptualised in the NAP.

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(j) United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has been involved in conflict intervention as part of her activities under the Emergency Preparedness and Response (EPR) component. UNICEF has collaborated with the IPCR and the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) towards building institutional capacity for mainstreaming peace building and reducing the risk of conflict and disasters in Nigeria. The IPCRUNICEF partnership has produced a generic framework for mainstreaming peace building in development programming in Nigeria. With this tool-kit, development planners and implementers can integrate peace building and conflict analysis into the stages of the development programming cycle for the purpose of reducing development-induced conflict disorders. This tool-kit will complement the objectives of the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) which is Nigeria's benchmark for the attainment of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Emerging global concerns in Conflict Intervention There have been critical global responses to the role of International Organisations (IOs) and humanitarian bodies in conflict intervention. Some analysts see conflicts as a direct backlash of the structural adjustment and economic liberalisation processes of the IMF and the World Bank, which are controlled by creditor nations in Europe and America (Federici 2000; Paris 2001). Analyses of this persuasion ab initio implicate IOs in the conditions that cause violence and instability in the countries they intervene. Such analyses question the intentions and commitment of this group of interveners in tackling the social conflicts that challenge developing countries. It is argued, for instance, that the structural adjustment policy (SAP) of the 1980s destroyed the livelihoods of families in Nigeria and some of the young people who had hoped to be in school might have missed their only opportunity, and thus became vulnerable to manipulation by conflict entrepreneurs. Besides, the impoverishment of the

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people as a result of SAP-induced job losses broke family relationships and intensified youth alienation and unemployment and made young people willing tools for violence. Zartman (1995) and Paris (2001) have argued that the fasttrack liberalisation foisted on developing economies whose domestic conditions and institutions lacked the capacity to absorb the rapid internationalisation process precipitated conflict and instability in these countries. The argument is that the specificities of country needs and stage of development have not been taken into account in introducing privatisation and liberalisation. Given these criticisms, it might be useful for IOs to incorporate authentic local content to their intervention plans so that ownership of the processes is vested in the local economy and driven by the people. The criticisms notwithstanding, IOs have made and can make significant contributions to the advancement of peace agenda in Nigeria. In the specific area of conflict mitigation, there is no doubt that in practice partnerships between IOs and the different levels of government have produced peace-enhancing relationships among communities. It is therefore a positive sign that the federal government, through IPCR, is exploring further areas of collaboration with IOs and NGOs in order to consolidate democracy through strengthening of the existing structures for the prevention, management and transformation of conflict in Nigeria.

Notes & References: 1See Oshita, O. O. (2001) Philosophy, Education and Environment, Calabar: University of Calabar Press. 2It increasingly appears that news reportage in most media, not only in Nigeria but also in Britain and elsewhere, point to the negative and the bizarre making more 'breaking news' headlines than positive information. A reflection on what is now known as the CNN effect may well indicate this tendency as a global phenomenon. Albert, I. O. (2001) Building Peace, Advancing Democracy: Experience with Third party interventions in Nigeria's conflicts 60

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(ed.), Ibadan: Petraf/John Archers. Federici, Silvia (2000) “War, Globalization, and Reproduction” Peace and Change, Volume 25 Number 2 pp.153165. IPCR/AAPW (2001) Report of the Conflict Transformation Workshop organised for youth leaders of Soku, Elem-Sangama, and Oluasiri, PortHarcourt. Lederach, J. P. (2003) The Little Book of Conflict Transformation, Intercourse: Good Books. Otite, O. and Albert, I. O. (1999) Community Conflicts in Nigeria: Management, Resolution and Transformation (ed.), Ibadan: Spectrum. Richmond, O. P. (2002) Maintaining Order, Making Peace, London: Palgrave. Stewart, Frances and FitzGerald, Valpy (2001) War and Underdevelopment Volume One: The Economic Consequences of War, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Paris, Roland (2001) “Wilson's Ghost: The Faulty Assumptions of Post Conflict Peace building” in Turbulent Peace: The challenges of managing international conflict, Chester A. Crocker, et al. (eds.), Washington: United States Institute of Peace. Zartman, W. (1995) Governance as Conflict Management: Politics of West Africa, Brookings.

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Chapter 5 THE STRATEGIC CONFLICT ASSESSMENT (SCA) OF NIGERIA

The Strategic Conflict Assessment (SCA) is a national conflict study exercise conducted in Nigeria in 2002. It is the most broad-based and comprehensive conflict intervention study to be done in, and on Nigeria, by Nigerians, since independence. The Nigerian SCA is also the first of its kind in Africa. It is the product of a partnership involving key stakeholders on conflict including the government, international agencies, the academia, and non-governmental organisations. Some of the roles played separately by these organisations towards conflict reduction in Nigeria have been mentioned in Chapter four. Our focus in this Chapter is to highlight key aspects of the SCA as this remains the most significant baseline study on conflict conducted in the country during the period under consideration in this book. As a proactive exercise, the SCA marked an important paradigm shift away from the regime of reactive and piecemeal response to the phenomenon of social conflict in Nigeria. The main goal of the SCA was to provide an in-depth and inclusive analysis of the conflict environment in Nigeria with a view to understanding the causes and courses of conflict, the dynamics involved in conflict management and resolution, and strategies for preventing and mitigating the dysfunctional effects of violent conflict. The objectives of the SCA included to: * Create a better understanding among all stakeholders of underlying multidimensional causes of violent conflicts in Nigeria; * Identify opportunities to strengthen early warning, prevention, management and resolution capacities; * Inform strategic processes of international partners to identify ways to support Nigeria in conflict prevention and to adopt a “do no harm” policy in critical projects (Reinermann 2002; 1).

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Goodhand (2001; 14) rightly describes a SCA as “a means of developing a country (or regional) contextual analysis, which includes an understanding of the conflict (open or latent), the conflict- related risks associated with development or humanitarian programmes and the options for conflict sensitive aid.” A SCA is also regarded as an important component of the planning process for a country irrespective of its conflict profile (DFID 2002; 11). Every society stands to benefit in real terms from the explanatory and/or predictive force of a strategic conflict assessment, its conflict history notwithstanding. The analyses in a SCA help in the prediction and assessment of “the potential or actual impacts of development [interventions] on the dynamics of peace and conflict” (Goodhand 2001; 7). A strategic conflict assessment contains formal principles and material data required for the conduct of specific project conflict assessments (PCAs) and conflict impact assessments (CIAs) for substantive peace-enhancing activities. Generally, conflict assessments point to the increasing interconnection of development and security domains in the contemporary global governance order (Duffield 2001). Planning, Design and Funding of the SCA The broad-based consultations that preceded the conduct of the SCA showed the willingness of stakeholders in conflict to understand the conflict phenomenon in Nigeria and evolve a common approach for its study with a view to reducing violence, create inclusive peace constituencies, expand opportunities and enhance development. This demonstration of commitment by stakeholders in conflict in Nigeria was necessary to achieve the level of cross-cutting cooperation needed for the successful conduct of the SCA. This means that a SCA must be well planned and executed if its findings and conclusions are to positively impact on the lives of people and their aspirations for a peaceful society. The idea of a conflict assessment for Nigeria emerged from explorative discussions between the IPCR and some international development agencies, the World Bank, the Department for International Development of the British Government (DFID), United Nations Development Programme

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(UNDP) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The initiative received a boost from discussions of a presentation titled “Think Peace”, by Dirk Reinermann of the World Bank, at the Culture and Conflict Syndicate of the Culture and Development Workshop, held at Abuja Sheraton on March 19, 2002. The collaborating organisations sponsored a national Workshop for Stakeholders of Peace Research and Conflict Resolution convened by IPCR in May 2002. At the Workshop were representatives of IGOs, NGOs, CBOs, the academia, religious organisations, and other civil society groups. Participants deliberated on the proposal for a SCA in Nigeria and unanimously endorsed its importance against the backdrop of the violent episodic communal clashes that were occurring across the country. The design of the SCA was two-pronged, a desk-based mapping exercise and field study covering the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria. IPCR and her partnering organisations funded various stages of the SCA exercise and made contributions in cash, materials and resource persons. Mapping the causes of conflict This consists of a desk-based analysis in which consultants were engaged to study existing literature, including documents and reports of development agencies, academic publications and other studies dealing with conflict in Nigeria. The idea was to identify gaps in extant literature and to address any lacunae in the information during the fieldwork. Robin Luckham, DFID consultant, was involved in appraising the literature review during this phase of the study. Methodology for In-country field survey: This involved an elaborate process of information gathering on conflict using observations, interviews and focus group discussions (FGD) with conflict actors across the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria. Prior to engaging the fieldwork in August 2002, a workshop to address methodological concerns of the proposed study was held at IPCR in July 2002. The field methodology and instrumentation were discussed with the 64

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stakeholders from participating organisations. Tony Vaux, consulting for the DFID, facilitated the Methodology Workshop while I assisted as the Project Coordinator. The training focused on standardising the study instruments and data collection approaches for the field teams. The aim was partly to systematise the information-gathering mechanism so as to reduce the difficulties of collating and analysing data. Based on Nigeria's conflict profile and the observations from the conflict mapping exercise, the IPCR, in consultation with the in-country research teams, modified and adapted a conflict analysis framework that had been applied elsewhere by the DFID (DFID 2002). The methodology adopts a “political economy approach, examining the interest of conflict actors, and focuses strongly on the linkages between underlying causes [and courses] of conflict” (IPCR 2003; 13). One of the key assumptions of the SCA was that the study population fairly represented the conflict population in Nigeria's six geopolitical zones. Within the SCA's broad objectives, conflict structures, actors, dynamics, and responses by a wide range of actors in Nigeria were sourced and analysed. A number of strategies and options were deliberated upon and appropriate conflictsensitive responses expected of state and non-state actors were carefully considered. The Nigeria SCA thus constitutes a pragmatic framework for state and non-state actors to appraise the conflict-sensitivity of their policies and programmes to ensure people-friendly development, peace and national stability. The methodology of the SCA involved the use of survey samples consciously generated from, and across opinion strata, representing the conflict population in the country, comprising rural and urban segments. The SCA table of conflict causation (See Appendix A) followed the category matrix of the DFID, which analyses factors in the Political, Economic, Security and Social sectors, horizontally and their vertical linkages across institutional/authority levels (International, Regional, National, State and Local actors). The Actor Trigger Conflict model used explains conflict development patterns within social systems in terms of the existence of intervening variables (triggers and dynamics) that precede the violent eruption of a conflict. This model is predicated on the trivariate hypothesis where A=

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predisposing variables (actors and structural factors); B= intervening variables (triggers and dynamics); C= dependent variables (violent conflict). Alternatively, we could construe the predisposing factors as the initial conditions (causes) of conflict, the intervening variables as comprising the triggers/dynamics (course) of the conflict, and the outcome (violence) as the end result of the conflict. This model identifies major causes and actors, and elucidates the dynamics of violent conflict, including the responses of actors. Its conceptualisation is similar to the ABC triangle associated with TRANSCEND (Galtung et al. 2000). In TRANSCEND the authors argue that the ABC triangle (where A= attitudes, B= behaviours, and C= contradictions), constitutes necessary but not sufficient conditions for conflict. Being necessary conditions imply that these must be present in every situation of conflict, and being insufficient means they do not exclusively constitute grounds for a conflict. In other words, similar attitudes (initial conditions or causes), behaviours (triggers) and contradictions (conflict) may obtain in two communities but one may experience violence while the other may not. The TRANSCEND framework combines the actor-directed ABC triangle and the conflictfocused notion of direct, structural and cultural violence (DSC), in analysing conflict situations (Galtung et al. 2000; xiv-xv, 22). The political economy approach adopted by the SCA recognises the decisive impact that actor-induced and structurally engineered variables have on the causes, origin and course of conflict in Nigeria. It conceptualises needs in agreement with third generation peace approaches according to which the foundations for peace lie beneath the surface, in people's basic needs and culture and the structural or institutional response to these needs (Galtung et al. 2000; xv). Monitoring of SCA Implementation process: An Advisory Committee with membership from collaborating agencies had the responsibility of monitoring the implementation of the project. The Director General and Chief Executive Officer of IPCR chaired the Committee. The Committee managed the timetable for the project, aspects of the 66

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funding and budget, scheduled the different segments of the study, and exercised oversight functions on process and methodology. The Advisory Group initially met fortnightly, and once the project took off, only convened as frequently as this was necessary, ensuring that the SCA study conformed to the set objectives and the Terms of Reference (TOR). A project office based at the IPCR and headed by a co-ordinator was entrusted with the day-to-day administration of the SCA. The Advisory Committee met with the local and foreign consultants and both groups of consultants exchanged ideas from time to time spanning the two phases of the research project. A number of information-sharing sessions were held via videoconferencing with DFID and World Bank officials during which insights on the SCA, its progress and direction were discussed. These interactions greatly enriched the SCA process, improved its tools and made the outcome relevant to a wider audience. In each of the six zones covered by the study, research teams identified conflict actors and grassroots stakeholders with whom they interacted either individually or in small groups. Traditional and community leaders, women and youth groups, politicians, public and civil servants, traders, academics, farmers, artisans, students, vigilantes/private militias, religious leaders, members of the security forces, etc. were engaged in interviews and discussions. Below are summaries of the findings of the research teams that covered the six geopolitical zones of South-South, South-West, South-East, North-Central, North-East, and North-West. Summary of SCA reports from the six zones The study brings out from all the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria the role of conflict actors, their attitudes and the contradictions that characterise their behaviour in the society. The key actors identified were treated under the different categories, Security, Political, Economic and Social (IPCR 2003; 36-37). Security actors include the police and army, exservicemen, and the irregular actors like the vigilante and militia groups. In the context of the conflicts studied, these actors have played destructive rather than constructive roles in conflict. The activities of soldiers and police in Odi (Rivers

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State) and in the conflict between the Tiv and Jukun (Benue/Taraba states) point to the adverse role of security agencies in conflict intervention. Their intervention had been a part of government's power-based response to conflict according to which conflict intervention implies the use of force or its threat as a way of stemming violence. This approach ignores the needs and grievances of conflicting parties and fails to acknowledge the structural factors that fuel conflict. It also does not confront the conditions that have made ex-servicemen, vigilantes and militias the new bases of sectional and private security, resulting in the threat to national security. Political actors in conflict comprise the political elite, including government officials, political office holders and aspirants to public positions, politicians, political parties and associations, traditional and community leaders. These actors who are the drivers of prebendal politics (unmerited patronage/pacification), often generate tensions and violent conflicts in the pursuit of personal political and economic advantages. People who are losing out in a political or economic contest appeal to exclusionist sentiments such as indigene versus settlers to instigate conflict, as was the case in parts of Lagos, Ogun, Plateau, Kano, and Nassarawa states. Among the economic actors in conflict are Transnational Corporations (TNCs), Government, labour unions, herders and cultivators, International Financial Institutions, market associations, etc. In the north of Nigeria, adverse environmental conditions (e.g. dessertification) have constrained resources such as green pasture for cattle and surface water for domestic uses, igniting the conflict between herders and farmers. In the Niger Delta the eruption of violent conflicts is attributed to the government's non-dialogical and repressive response to protestors of the policies of multinational oil companies (MNOCs). Years of prohibition of conversation in the area have resulted in some of the conflicts transforming from the struggle for economic justice to the defence of the ethnic bases of parties. For example, the Okrika-Eleme conflict erupted when the Okrikans felt that the “…the refinery was employing less of their community than they were entitled to, and as a result youth groups demonstrated violently and set up road blocks to prevent the

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public (including Elemes) from getting to the refinery. The Elemes reacted …and the situation quickly turned into violent conflict…” (IPCR 2003: 9).

This shows how one conflict for economic benefit, in a characteristic onion style, develops layers by transforming into land dispute, chieftaincy claims, and conflict over political representation. The Ijaw-Itsekiri conflict is another example of one between communities in the Niger Delta and the MNOCs on the one hand, and the communities with the government on the other, that has resulted not only in community conflict over land ownership, but conflict over chieftaincy and even indigeneity rights. Yet, the conflict in the Niger Delta is fundamentally economic (benefits derivable from being an oil producing community) and effectively mobilises from other bases such as ethnic/communal (over royalties/ownership of the land), political (sponsorship/support of candidates/parties sympathetic to actors), and traditional (e.g. Urhobo/Ijaw/Itsekiri and claims of exclusive indigeneity of Warri) (IPCR 2003; 43). All these have been made possible by years of government failure to play a constructive role in the development of the oil producing communities and its poor monitoring mechanism over the activities of oil companies. These shortcomings are interpreted by ordinary folks as somewhat patronising of elite greed. Many community actors regard these lapses as deliberate ploys to undermine the grievances of their people and construe the apparent weakness of the government as selective. The status quo allowed only the elite of the area (not the community) to benefit from appointments and contracts, as representatives of their communities, while the basic needs of the majority of communities remained unattended. Among the social actors in conflict are individuals and groups that exploit group differences and ethnic bases to launch their personal ambitions. Located in this category are religious leaders/organisations, ethnic associations, youth organisations, students associations (cults), ethnic militias, NGOs, CBOs, the media, etc. While some of these bodies act responsibly towards conflict and help to develop peace agendas for communities, others misrepresent issues and trigger violent clashes in the society. The media, for example, needs to be assisted to develop 69

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a capacity for peace building journalism if it is to complement the broader efforts for peace education in Nigeria. Multiple causal linkages can be established among the factors in the table of conflict causation (see Appendix A) when we analyse the conflict phenomenon in Nigeria. Using the levels-of-analysis (see Waltz, 1979), the table of causation enables us to see how causal factors at one level (e.g. national) link with others on another level (e.g. state or local) in the conflict environment in Nigeria. Perennial tensions in the Niger Delta area have generated breakdown of trust among stakeholders, causing a high level of insecurity that has forced individuals and communities to resort to security self-help by owning automatic guns, forming militias and hiring private security operatives. The international/regional scenario in turn reinforces this where small arms and light weapons mainly from conflict zones in Europe and Africa, are readily accessible. Other chain effects would include the spate of armed robbery, politically motivated assassinations, and the rise of vigilantes; private security and ethnic militias in the country. These also exacerbate the weakness of the state and its declining ability to mediate in national conflicts, leading to loss of confidence in public structures and institutions, including the security agencies, the police and army, Boundary Commission, and the judiciary. All this clearly point to the fact that causation in conflict must be understood and comprehended as a composite and interconnected chain of events, each leading to the other(s) and all being interwoven across sectors, domains and levels of authority. The SCA and the National Action Plan (NAP) A plan of action designed to facilitate the actualisation of the recommendations of the SCA was then developed as a followup strategy (see appendix B). Although it is difficult to summarise the SCA findings, one of its unmistakable conclusions is that social conflict constitutes a major impediment to development in Nigeria. Connected to this is the realisation that unresponsive and corrupt governance breed contradictions and eventual violence, which in turn threatens democracy and the survival of the nation. 70

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The SCA provides us with an inclusive framework for appraising socio-economic and political activities in Nigeria. It also serves as a benchmark for understanding future conflict development as well as devising effective strategies for deescalating existing conflicts that have undermined social integration and national security efforts in the country since 1999. The SCA clearly identifies and situates the centrifugal forces in Nigeria within the contexts of the structural inadequacy of the state, its conflict-insensitive policies, and the social and political ethic of self-interest (prebendalism) embedded in an elite-driven political economy (Joseph 1991). Current studies of conflict in Nigeria apply social scientific rigour in responding to the methodological difficulties that arise from treating ethnic groups as homogenous entities. The reality of intra-ethnic conflicts such as Ife-Modakeke in Osun State, Aguleri-Umuleri in Anambra State, Tafawa Balewa in Bauchi, and Ugep-Idomi in Cross River State, among others, reveals ethnic groups as dynamic and internally atomistic and differentiable units. Every human group is stratified by power and composed of individuals with diverse life-plans and interests. Thus, Nigeria would still contain seeds of violent conflicts even if she was made up of a single ethnic group. For there is no reason to believe that the contest for access to scarce resources by competing interests would cease, unless the overarching centralisation and control of the common wealth by the state was moderated in a way that directly empowered the citizens to meet their basic, non-negotiable needs. This would require a fundamental revision of the conduct of governance in favour of the grassroots side-by-side with broad-based system reforms. Horowitz (1985) suggests five political approaches that may lead to the reduction of inter-ethnic conflicts. These are:

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♦

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Dispersal by proliferating power centres to take the heat off a single point (e.g. federal government); Arrangements that emphasize intra-ethnic conflict instead; Policies that create incentives for inter-ethnic cooperation; Policies that encourage alignments based on interests other than ethnicity; and Minimise disparities between groups to reduce dissatisfaction.

The National Action Plan (NAP) for the SCA highlights five key issues similar to Horowitz’s. Based on the NAP, to reduce conflict in Nigeria and diminish the image of a nation on the precipice, the following challenges must be appreciated. 1) Acknowledging a common experience of military dictatorship, deprivation and marginalisation across the country. 2) Negative effect of the nation's dependence on oil revenues exploited from a relatively small part of the country. 3) Use of the centre [federal government] as a clearing house for the distribution of oil money whilst the source of the resources remains impoverished. 4) The need for the media to play a more constructive role in conflict (e.g. balanced and disinterested news report). 5) Increase trust between government and civil society for a constructive partnership in conflict reduction.

From the foregoing, the SCA clearly recognises the political side of conflict regulation. The lessons from the SCA leave no one in doubt as to the need for stakeholders of conflict to approach peace not just as a goal, but as a process that needs to be constantly created and recreated through the collaboration of state and non-state actors, and the collective action of informed citizens. Thus, one of the roads to peace in Nigeria is for all stakeholders to buy into aspects of the NAP and closely monitor its implementation in all the sectors (see Appendix B). Quite 72

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unfortunately, the Presidential Implementation Committee (PIC) charged with the implementation of NAP has suffered inexplicable political inertia in recent months. If the government and its development partners would play positive roles in grassroots development and the provision of employment opportunities, then one of the expectations of the SCA would have been met. Understandably, the absence of employment for the youth in their original places of abode is responsible for the rural-urban drift that has contributed to increased restiveness among urban youths and exacerbated criminality in Nigeria. Other areas of focus include gendersensitive development initiatives that would encourage and provide opportunities for women who, along with the children and youth are often the most victimised by violence. Yet, unless government demonstrates the political will needed to address widespread corruption and eliminate the schism between policies and practices, violent conflicts would persist. This is one way of confronting the contradictions that perpetrate direct, structural and cultural violence in their various forms in Nigeria. In Chapter six, we shall discuss issues relating to intended and unintended outcomes and (mis)interpretations of conflict interventions in Nigeria. Notes & References DFID (2002) Conducting Conflict Assessments: Guidance Notes, London: DFID. DFID (2002) Conducting Conflict Assessments: An Introduction, London: DFID. Duffield, M. (2001) Global Governance and the New Wars, London: Zed Press. Galtung, J., Jacobsen, C.G., and Brand-Jacobsen, K.F. (2000) Searching for Peace: The road to TRANSCEND, London: Pluto Press. Goodhand, J. (2001) Conflict Assessments: A Synthesis Report, London: Centre for Defence Studies. Horowitz, D. L. (1985) Ethnic Groups in Conflict, Berkeley: University of California Press. IPCR (2003) Strategic Conflict Assessment (SCA): Consolidated and Zonal Reports, Abuja: Institute for Peace and

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Conflict Resolution. Joseph, R. (1991) Prebendal Politics in Nigeria, Ibadan: Spectrum Books. Reinermann, D. (2002) “Think Peace”: Proposed Approach to a Joint Strategic Conflict Assessment in Nigeria, Presented at the Culture and Conflict Syndicate of the Culture and Development Workshop, Abuja, March 19. Waltz, K. (1979) Theory of International Politics, Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley.

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Chapter 6 SOME PERSPECTIVES ON CONFLICT INTERVENTIONS IN NIGERIA

As a human interest, conflict is a constitutive part of the normal living experiences of all live-and-blood human beings. Yet, most people in Nigeria fail to realise that conflict and conflict resolution are about people, and will remain central to social existence. There is, therefore, an urgent need for the demystification of conflict causation in Nigeria through public education. This is absolutely important, given the role that conflict plays as a weapon of distraction in Nigeria. Since Nigeria is a developing nation, her citizens are still challenged by the bare necessities of life, with severe implications for the frequency and the stakes of conflict in the country. This is not an isolated situation as other developing economies that are troubled by poverty and underdevelopment experience deepseated structural and direct violence. Globally, experience has also shown that underdevelopment, poverty and violent conflict tend to reinforce each other. What the foregoing shows is that conflict is about people in particular environments and how they respond to the tensions and stress in the objective conditions that surround them. To enthrone the culture of peace in Nigeria we need a combination of people-based pedagogical approaches, problemsolving workshops, community and school-based peace education programmes, political education, media-based peace education and the dissemination of outcomes of peace research. Informal platforms are also needed to share community best practices and lessons learned in conflict prevention and peace building. To be able to do this, state and non-state stakeholders in conflict and peace research should exchange information and share experiences in ways that help to build synergies and strengthen social energies towards a culture of peace. Having adequate information regarding the potentials for change in a conflict situation would help people appreciate what positive contribution they can make in conflict and seize 76

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the opportunities that this provides for everyone to become well-off. This is why the Chinese define conflict in terms of Opportunity and Danger, believing that the mutual awareness of the potentials for danger and opportunity for progress would propel people towards seizing the opportunities for positive change inherent in conflict. But conflict could also be driven by deeper and often opaque motives. In Nigeria, where the leadership at various levels tends to be highly opportunistic, conflict is exploited at the different levels by the few that seek to benefit from its occurrence. Writing on the character of conflict as a social phenomenon, Ake (2000; 97) paraphrases Stavenhagen thus: Conflicts between ethnic groups are not inevitable nor are they eternal. They arise out of specific historical situations, are moulded by particular and unique circumstances, and they are constructed to serve certain interests by idealists and ideologies, visionaries and opportunists, political leaders and ethnic power brokers of various kinds.

As indicated in Chapters two and three, conflict disorders in Nigeria are driven and sustained by elite economic and political opportunism. However, issues in the threshold of religion, ethnicity, and indigene-settler relations are the masks used while the actual motives for the conflicts are submerged. Therefore, the ‘foot soldiers’ in a conflict may not find the root causes of a conflict for which they may be staking their lives without making extra effort. Do to a combination of illiteracy, poverty and ignorance foot soldiers of violent conflicts in Nigeria hardly ever probe the motivation for their involvement in battles. From the foregoing, to understand how the phenomenon of conflict manifests in Nigeria, there is a need for both academics and practitioners of conflict resolution to capture and account for the roles of various actors in generating the antecedents and initial conditions that have profoundly impacted on the country's conflict profile. This would require the stakeholders of peace and conflict to develop a framework for creating and sustaining constructive synergies between theory and practice, scholars and practitioners. In 2002, IPCR facilitated the launching of Peace Studies 77

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Association of Nigeria (PESAN), a forum of stakeholders of peace research and practice, which was designed as a platform for building multi-functional synergies among individuals and organisations working for peace in Nigeria. Unfortunately, this body could not be sustained, although the need for a platform for networking among professionals and stakeholders remained. At present, an association, the Society for Peace Studies and Practice (SPSP) is working towards building a bridge between academics and practitioners of peace in Nigeria. SPSP was inaugurated early in 2006 with its Secretariat at the Centre for African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. SPSP has coordinators in all the states of Nigeria with a membership comprising academics, diplomats, technocrats, policy makers, military officers, security experts and media practitioners among others. The experience is that groups such as SPSP cannot do much unless the basic principles upon which the social structure is founded are themselves peace-enhancing. We shall discuss a few relevant areas below. Justice and Equity as conflict intervention No nation can attain peace in the absence of the public trust in the justice system. Citizens must be made to develop confidence and trust in the capacity of state institutions to deliver the social goods to the people. This would require that both the formal and material principles of justice conform to the conditions of fairness, equity and the dignity of the human person. In a Theory of Justice, John Rawls (1973) presents two principles of justice which contain the critical ideas of fairness and equity and how these can engender public trust and confidence. State and non-state institutions working to promote a culture of peace in Nigeria through conflict regulation must see the recurrence of episodic violent conflicts as a challenge to both government and civil society. For any government to establish sustainable peace constituencies, the structures must be people-driven and derived from the security needs of her citizens. The current efforts at conflict de-escalation in Nigeria should transcend the narrow objective of normalising relations between adversaries to that of effecting a change in the 78

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structural conditions that cause conflict. For example, are there policies or structures that advantage some and make perpetual losers of others? Are the existing structures of government and civil society in Nigeria equipped to midwife a society whose benchmarks are fairness and justice, mutual accommodation, respect for merit, commitment to non-violence, peaceful coexistence, and creative empathy? As stakeholders, we should indeed be interested in seeing how those who steer the critical institutions of society disinterestedly deal with individuals and communities other than those with whom they identify. If well delivered, the Service Compact (SERVICOM) which emphasises the right to efficient service from the government should respond to this challenge. It is common practice in Nigeria to find communities and groups construe the appointment of one of their own into a public office to mean 'their own turn to share in the national cake'. In this mundane sense, Nigeria is only beginning to create an environment where people will commit themselves to strategies for 'baking' rather than 'sharing' the socalled national cake. While IPCR needs to engage in new and pragmatic ways for regulating domestic and regional conflicts in the years ahead, the Institute should strengthen its capacity for geographical coverage, using its early warning and response structures. The conduct of the SCA apart, the more critical challenge lies with the strategies for implementing the plan of action arising from the study. The Institute requires a strategic interface with government agencies through which public funds are being channelled for the development of infrastructure, creation of jobs, and the reduction of poverty. The ability of these agencies to do their job well will have a telling effect on the social indicators for conflict in the community. Cooperation through strategic inter-agency interface will ensure that each institution understands their interdependence. It helps, for instance, if social intervention agencies could mainstream peace building and conflict-sensitivity into the design and implementation of their programmes. This would be consistent with one of the recommendations of the SCA, which is the requirement for conflict-sensitive development planning. Consequently, the proper implementation of the official mandates of critical government bodies such as the National

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Directorate for Employment (NDE), National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) would have enormous implications for peace building, conflict prevention and regulation in Nigeria. By serving the welfare needs of their target population, NDE, NAPEP, NDDC, and similar government organs would be working against violence and insecurity in the sense that those who work for health effectively work against illness (See Galtung 2000; xiii). So long as these bodies conducted their interventions in ways that impact positively on society, the challenges of conflict disorders would be significantly minimised. However, social impact indices among the target populations indicate that a lot still needs to be done, especially for the vulnerable and other less well-off members of society. Sadly, some of the agencies charged with socio-economic interventions in Nigeria have allowed their activities to be sucked by the patrimonial control of the political and bureaucratic leadership, thus failing to account for themselves as organs for people-based social safety nets. Others have either been crippled by corruption and bureaucratic inertia or become channels for elite self-enrichment, euphemistically referred to as ‘democracy dividends’. The result is a scenario where poverty and unemployment crises have deepened and criminality, insecurity and violence are increasing by the day. The failure of many organisations to deliver as drivers of pro-poor development has been the bane of several government agencies in the past, sometimes translating to questions as to the relevance of such organisations.1 The problem with Nigeria is that many good ideas, institutions and programmes designed for public good, easily become victims of misguided, and sometimes even dubious implementation procedures. First, appointments into some of these establishments almost always disregard merit with the result that this is translated into organisational incapacity. Consequently, some of these vital institutions are unable to address the real life problems of the people. Obviously, the manipulation and use of appointments as a form of political patronage promotes mediocrity and detract from the capacity of institutions to person. This situation fuels the schism between policy prescriptions and 80

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implementation. There are two divergent conflict intervention philosophies that seem to define the modus operandi of the political representatives of the government on the one hand and civil society groups involved in conflict resolution activities on the other. Pro-government political actors of the state tend to embrace conflict resolution activities with the hope that such interventions will bring 'rebels' or ethnic militants into line without threatening or altering the status quo, while civil society actors hope to use conflict resolution activities to extract legitimacy from the government, influence attitudes, and win the respect and trust of the parties. The concern of both parties with peripheral issues compromises the needs of the people. The response of IGOs and INGOs involved in conflict resolution is often to cautiously straddle these two philosophies while keeping a strategic focus on their business interests and the peace agenda of their home governments and sponsors. The reality of the development environment in Nigeria is that civil society and the state must collaborate and cooperate in the programming and implementation of development interventions. Development actors in Nigeria cannot hope to have international development partners conceive, plan and implement development programmes in the country. As is said in the local parlance, local actors cannot expect international partners to literally weep more than the bereaved. Government aside, civil society and NGOs in Nigeria need to develop the capacity to assert their role in the determination of development interventions in the country beyond the focus on extracting legitimacy. The civil society in Nigeria is often unaware that its primary constituency is the people. By and large, the collaboration of civil society and government is to enable both constituencies maximise service to the people. The role of the media in conflict has become critical in global discourse. In its report of January 25, 2000, Essential Action and Global Exchange (2002; 2) lament the discrepancy in the told and untold stories of the conflict and tension in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria: While the story told to consumers of Nigerian crude in the United States and the European Union via ad campaigns and other public relations efforts is that oil companies are a

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positive force in Nigeria, providing much needed economic development resources, the reality that confronted our delegation was quite the opposite. … These corporations' acts of charity and development are slaps in the face of those they claim to be helping. Far from being a positive force, these oil companies act as a destabilising force, pitting one community against another, and acting as a catalyst together with the military with whom they work closely to [stir] some of the violence racking the region today.2

Former governor of Bayelsa State, D. S. P. Alamieyeseigha3 underscored this point when he explained the grievances of the Niger Delta communities in terms of their frustration about the way the “resources generated from their land have been used to develop other cities in the Nigerian nation” to the neglect of the Niger Delta areas (Vanguard, Tuesday September 2, 2003). Ironically, and quite typical of the grabbing tendency of the elite in Nigeria, Alamieyeseigha lost his office as State Governor following a fallout from his looting of the revenues allocated for the development of his own people. The point is, perceptions about the Niger Delta, such as captured above, are widespread both in and outside Nigeria. These perceptions have become so widespread that they require the urgent attention of the federal, state and local governments if conflict reduction efforts in the Niger Delta are to yield positive results. It is based on this agonising history of the Niger Delta that President Olusegun Obasanjo initiated an accelerated development blueprint for the area in 2006. National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) The National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) is an expression of the development tools through which Nigeria hopes to attain the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). As the roadmap for the economic and development blueprint for Nigeria, NEEDS has step-down components at the state and local government levels, known as State Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (SEEDS) and Local Government Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (LEEDS) 82

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respectively. Previous development blueprints in Nigeria have suffered from shoddy and inadequate strategies for implementation. Thus, if NEEDS, SEEDS, and LEEDS are adequately implemented at their respective levels, Nigeria would be able to attain MDGs by year 2015. There is no doubt that effective implementation of economic and development programmes have positive effects on employment generation, income levels, access to opportunities, crime levels, etc. Besides, these indices do have their own positive impact on the efforts towards the prevention, management and resolution of conflicts in Nigeria. The Strategic Conflict Assessment (SCA) study identified the struggle for access to economic opportunities as one of the root causes of violent conflict in Nigeria (IPCR, 2003). Expectations in conflict intervention NGOs in Nigeria currently pattern their conflict resolution after the relational theories of conflict, according to which conflict is comprehended and analysed in terms of the relations of conflict parties. Communication-intensive training manuals are then used in problem-solving workshops aimed at normalising the strained relations. This process is designed to help parties to positively reconstruct their perceptions of each other and deal with the issues in conflict dispassionately. By adopting this strategy, the typical conflict resolution workshops deal with issues through a piecemeal incremental process. The focus on enhancing communicative understanding is founded on the belief that conflict is caused by the parties' misperception of each other's intentions, actions and needs. This may be true because, generally, it is believed that conflict increases in the same proportion that communication decreases. By focussing on communicative understanding, conflict resolution might help us identify the gaps in order to restore communication and normalise relations. However, the communication-based approach fails to address and change the sources of the defective conditions that caused the dislocation in the first place (See Lederach 2003). While conflict resolution relies on the hermeneutic approach for the sake of building trust and restoring relationships, conflict transformation goes further to

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cause practical changes to happen in the objective conditions responsible for the conflict disorder. One of the challenges of conflict interventions in Nigeria is that of preparing and executing a Workshop programme. Selecting Workshop participants is a task that is sometimes made difficult due to complex social calculations involved. The social expectations include the fact that the selection should not only be gender-sensitive, but responsive to a network of diversity issues - geography, ethnicity, religion, politics, etc. These mundane issues tend to have the overriding consideration. Often, neither the participants nor their communities are immediately concerned about the importance of the skills to be acquired from the training but on what pecuniary benefits they stand to gain from the Workshop. Participants in some Conflict Resolution Workshops have actually begun by asking how much money they would be paid for participation and they review their interest in the training based on such considerations. In other cases, Workshops which did not meet participants’ monetary expectations have failed as a result of disagreements with participants over 'benefits'. These circumstances have led to the failure of Workshops due to the self-fulfilling prophesies of the participants. The participants' understanding usually is that the organisers owe them, and their communities' assumption is that the participants were going to have a share of an imaginary 'national' or 'global' cake, depending on who the organisers are. This attitude to Workshops has been found to be pervasive across Nigeria and varies from one place to another. Richmond (2002; 127) attributes the problematic of expectations to a number of factors. These include “the level of politicisation that the conduct of the workshops receives from the political establishment and constituencies of both communities about participants' intentions and perceptions visà-vis workshops, and also perceptions of the other communities' exploitation of such workshops at both the unit and system level.” Obviously, decisions about conflict intervention activities can hardly be insulated from calculations from the daily politics of society (see Bush & Folger 1994; Bush 2000; Richmond 2002). As critical human interests, the interaction of politics and conflict interventions can only pose a problem 84

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where the requirements of conflict research are subordinated to, or overtaken by political realism. In the Niger Delta, for example, the competition by communities for advantages from Multinational Corporations is sometimes extrapolated to other areas. The tendency is for the beneficiaries of humanitarian interventions to see the work of development interveners from the perspective of getting back what had been taken away from their common heritage. Understandably, this logic would prevail in any society where there exists a history of exploitation, culpable neglect and deprivation of the host or landlord communities. Notes and References 1Questions have arisen in the public domain, within and outside of government, regarding incapacity of these establishments whose intervention programmes were expected to transform conditions that were capable of generating social conflict. The prevalence of corruption in past governments and the lack of political will almost always justified public calls for the change of leadership and even scrapping of such policies and programmes. See for example, ThisDay News report on NDDC by Ahamefula Ogbu (http://www.nigeriamasterweb.com/paperfrmes.html, 8/12/2003); Accessed in February, 2004. 2 See Essential Action and Global Exchange (8/21/2002, p.2) “Oil for Nothing: Multinational Corporations, Environmental Destruction, Death and Impunity in the Niger Delta” (http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/Africa/Nigeria.asp); Accessed in February, 2004. 3 The Vanguard Newspaper, Tuesday September 2, 2003. D.S.P. Alamieyeseigha was the Executive Governor of Bayelsa State, one of the states of the Niger Delta. Odi, the community that was invaded by armed security men in 1999 following the disappearance of some police officers is located in Bayelsa State. 4 See Richmond (2002; pp.128-9) for an interesting case study of Cyprus during the 1990s, which would compare fairly well with conflict scenarios in many parts of Nigeria, and in particular, in the Niger Delta. Expectations of pecuniary benefits by

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participants usually translate to the degree of support or lack of it that conflict resolution/transformation workshops receive. Where the workshops fall short of these expectations they are either dismissed as intrusions by the government of the day or sabotaged altogether on alleged security implications of their content and external bases of funding. Ake, Claude (2000) The Feasibility of Democracy in Africa, Dakar: CODESRIA. Ashmore, R. D., Jussim, L. and Wilder, D. (2001) Social Identity, intergroup conflict and conflict reduction (ed.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Galtung, J., Jacobsen, C. G. and Brand-Jacobsen, K. F. (2000) Searching for Peace: The road to TRANSCEND, London: Pluto Press. Richmond, O. P. (2002) Maintaining Order, Making Peace, New York: Palgrave. Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (2003), Strategic Conflict Assessment, Abuja: IPCR.

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Chapter 7 BUILDING PEACE IN DIVERSITY

Every human society has its culturally approved ways of conceptualising and responding to conflict. Being a highly heterogeneous country, Nigeria is an ensemble of more than 300 cultural and linguistic diversities. While one cannot deny the existence of cross-cutting elements in conflict resolution theory and practice, the fact that human beings are not only creatures of nature but also of nurture makes the case for culture-sensitive conflict intervention incontrovertible. Therefore, it is improbable that a single universal model for understanding the challenges of conflict interventions would capture the uniqueness of every situation as to be valid across cultures. Culture-sensitive conflict indicators abound among the diverse cultures and sub-cultures of Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Fulani, Boki, Tiv, Idoma, Igala, etc. For example, a Yoruba teenager who fails to gesticulate or bow while greeting an elder would be triggering a huge ethical conflict, whereas his peer engaging in the same behaviour in another cultural setting would elicit a totally different response. Cultural violence can be construed as an affront on the time-tested values of the people. It is within this context that Avruch and Black (1991) advocate the inclusion of the anthropological notion of culture in conflict resolution theory and practice. Also, Diana Francis (2002:60), drawing from her multi-cultural experiences, notes that cultural relativity is a fact of the human world that can be experienced at different levels. But Francis denies that the dichotomy of western individualism and the communal or collectivist values of traditional societies amount to any 'manifest conflict or contradiction'. While Francis may be right, it must be noted that such a negation of one value system by another, while it may not necessarily be an indication of a conflict, does in fact signify cultural differences which should not be ignored. Evidence from African epistemology points to a community 88

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epistemology as the foundation of knowledge and attributes wisdom to the entire community rather than any single individual. African epistemology, as contained in oral traditions and expressed in proverbs, typically ascribes sagacity to the collective and acknowledged as 'sayings of our people'. Still, unlike their western counterpart, the acknowledgment of authority of the collective invokes an attachment to both the living (usually elders), and the living-dead (ancestors). In contrast, western epistemology is founded on the intellectual output of individual authorities dating back to the pre-Socratic thinkers. There are world views and practices that are unique to the cultures in which they are found, and which may appear to others as peculiar, primitive or illogical. Yet, the primary aim of all conflict prevention efforts is to nip violent conflict in the bud and save society from the negative effects of violence. To that extent, conflict intervention activities are like antidotes to the impurities that threaten the network of inter personal and community relationships in the society. The cultural and linguistic plurality in Nigeria means that the resources used in Workshops (e.g. training manuals), must continually be adapted and readapted to each conflict situation even when this involves groups commonly perceived as homogeneous. A manual used in a Process Promoting Conflict Resolution Workshop between the Aguleri and Umuleri communities in Igbo land may for instance be inadequate for that purpose in a similar conflict in another part of Igboland. Every conflict context must be seen from the perspective of its uniqueness because situations have their cultural and spatiotemporal differences. Stereotyping is a common source of negative perceptions among groups in Nigeria. This phenomenon could reinforce the exclusion of the weak and the feeling of superiority for the advantaged. There is for example the wrong supposition that a cattle farmer is necessarily a Fulani and a Moslem, and that the land cultivator is necessarily non-Fulani or non-Moslem. Thus, no matter the evidence to the contrary, some people still find it difficult to believe that there are non-Fulani cattle farmers and Fulani land cultivators in Nigeria. Whether these stereotypes and extrapolations reflect the reality or not, they contain

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assumptions that lead to erroneous judgements which could increase inter-group tension at the least opportunity. One of the identifiable trends with the phenomenon of conflict in Nigeria is the dilation of conflict causation where, for example, the conflict over development and environmental devastation in the Niger Delta, easily transforms into land disputes, chieftaincy tussles, communal identity crisis and conflict between the royals and non-royals. In the north of Nigeria for instance, religion and ethnicity are often deployed in fighting economic and political battles, sometimes manifesting in the form of the so-called indigene-settler conflict. Analyses of the intra-ethnic conflict afflicting groups ordinarily regarded as homogeneous, as for example, Ife-Modakeke (Osun State), Ugep-Idomi (Cross River State), and Aguleri-Umuleri (Anambra State) show the dilation of conflict causation within a group or between groups. The crises between Tiv-Jukun, Sayawa-Hausa in Tafawa Balewa, Ijaw-Itsekiri, are also conflicts that lend themselves to this dilation of conflict causation. Whether it is intra or inter-community conflict, the actors in these conflicts deploy a myriad of primordial loyalties in their bid to differentiate and demonise each other. The Nigerian government between 1999 and 2006 came to the conclusion that while it can maintain a monopoly of (legitimate) force (a preserve currently contested by pockets of private militias and criminal gangs), it requires broad-based partnerships in the processes for the prevention, management and resolution of violent social conflicts. This has encouraged the government to partner with non-state actors in the search for sustainable peace in Nigeria. It was this understanding that gave impetus to the research collaboration that produced Nigeria's first Strategic Conflict Assessment (SCA) in 2003. This new orientation is consistent with the global governance concept which suggests that the state should be reconfigured to accommodate civil society groups as strategic platforms for citizens' contribution to peace and development. Recent events in Nigeria show that this relationship would flourish where the government is able to meet the minimum standards for good governance. These include the political will and ability to secure human rights, guarantee basic needs, promote justice and equity, and ensure accountability and transparency. 90

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The elimination of corruption, inequity, social injustice and fiscal irresponsibility are some of the key steps that the Nigerian government has taken in reconstructing the country to achieve peaceful coexistence. This is the basis upon which the human and material resources of Nigeria can be effectively mobilized for peace building and people-driven development. However, the hope that civil (democratic) governance would facilitate peaceful development and the provision of basic needs, housing, and education, health, and employment remains to be fulfilled. Democratic consolidation must be founded on credible elections that transcend the elevation of the illusion of voting at periodic elections. What is clear is that the high stakes in conflict would continue as long as macro economic policies fail to contemplate and promote pro-poor restructuring. Nigeria needs a functional government-private sector partnership that would secure the livelihoods of least well off members of our society and create employment for the youth. Arguably, one of the most palpable threats to Nigeria's democracy today is violent conflict, which results from social inequity and the systematic exclusion of vulnerable members of the society (e.g. youth, women and children) from the benefits of social cooperation. As education, employment, healthcare, potable water and decent housing continue to elude the majority; conflict regulation would remain a Herculean task. To be able to add value to the activities of conflict interveners and lay the foundation for viable constituencies of peace, society must guarantee the inviolability of the private space of each individual within the bounds of the law. For, to a large extent, the physical security of society is undermined by violent crime that is a direct response to the fear, by a large number of people, of not being able to access their basic needs without resort to self-help. The outcome of the SCA and the confidence and support that the project enjoyed from the civil society and the international community should encourage government to effect a paradigm shift from the power approach (dominant since independence and intensified during military rule), to a proactive and people-driven response to conflict. The government, along with non-state actors in peace and conflict activities in Nigeria, must seek first to restore hope in the

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citizenry; the hope for justice and equity and the hope that the material conditions of the poor, the exploited and the dispossessed can be positively transformed. For hope, confidence and trust, scarce as they are in Nigeria’s public space today, are the crucial planks in peace building, conflict prevention and the de-escalation of violence. There is the common assumption in official circles in Nigeria that violent conflict occurs outside the structures, processes and actions of the government. This is extremely misleading because the conflict disorders that afflict many communities in Nigeria today arise from structural violence instigated by the nature of governance. In fact, a profile of many violent conflicts shows their root causes in the laws, policies and actions of government. Research in peace and conflict studies in Nigeria also indicates that many government policies, programmes and development projects serve as the lightningrod for social frustrations, and violent social conflicts. One of the assumptions that underlie the government approach to conflict reduction in Nigeria since 1999 is that progress in conflict prevention is possible by increasing democratic participation, equity and justice through good governance. Events in recent history show that good governance can be enhanced through a tripartite collaboration of agencies of government, civil society and international development partners. It is obvious from the experience of the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution that inter-agency partnerships are contributing to the process of synergising efforts in critical areas for social mobilisation and the consolidation of peace. The implications of the foregoing for policy in Nigeria is for the country to engage in self-evaluation of its structures, institutions and actions in terms of how they all relate to peace building and conflict reduction. The impact of the macro economic policies of government on Nigerians is showing in the adverse security backlash, which in turn engendered negative effects on development. Nigeria may not have been on the brink since the end of the civil war, but it certainly experienced macro economic and public service reforms from which a huge amount of human and material resources were expended. The present reforms of the government have not only focused on efficiency and reduction of waste, they have also integrated a 92

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fast-track pre-retirement livelihood dimension. In the absence of a formal system of social security for citizens, Pre-retirement Training would provide fresh vistas of opportunities for life outside the public service. The big gap however, is that the Nigerian government has been unable to integrate into the governance system social safety nets that would guarantee citizens’ access to basic needs in a sustainable manner. Since politics drives the economic agenda, the reality is that the economy and other substructures have become subordinated to politics. The implication is that Nigeria needs an enlightened political class that will manage her diversity as the vehicle for democratic consolidation. A robust programme of political education is therefore required to move the practice of politics in Nigeria away from parochialism to the level of issues. Nigeria is in need of such mass political awareness to enable the country transform her heterogeneity peacefully into centrifugal energies for positive people-driven change. For, a citizen who is politically aware is less likely to engage with the national discourse at the level of personalities, stereotypes or other identity markers. Nigeria must recognise and utilise her multi-ethnicity as a lever for the promotion of inter-cultural dialogue, peaceful conflict transformation and people-driven development. This is the paradigm shift that she requires to transcend her present challenges. One way of achieving progress in this direction is to engage the grassroots population in political and development engineering processes that are demand-driven. For, Nigeria's democracy can neither survive nor blossom, unless it is planted in the placid soil of justice, fairness and equity of all her constituent parts. This way, Nigeria can build a solid society founded on the network of ethnic and linguistic pluralities with which she is so richly endowed. This can be made possible by empowering the grassroots population with liberating political education side-by-side with inclusion in the socio-economic and development engineering processes. What Karl Maier (2000) perceives as the brinkmanship of Nigeria is attributable to the disruptive regimes of supply-led rather than demand-driven development interventions of the past years. The development frameworks upon which national development was based minimised human security as the

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benchmark for development planning and implementation. It is hoped that the current reforms of the government do not only result in institutional capacity enhancement but also promote justice, equity, inclusiveness and fairness at the individual and group levels. These seem to be the irreducible minimum in the various sectors of society if Nigeria is to enjoy the peaceful deployment of her heterogeneity (ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious pluralities) for socio-economic development and national integration. Given the growing nexus of development, conflict and security in contemporary Nigeria, government must pay more attention to the use of constitutional and judicial frameworks in the regulation of social violence. Diversities in themselves do not result in violence, but it is social actors that make opportunistic deployment of identity, ethnic, linguistic, political and cultural categories in order to exploit government policies, actions and inactions. Nigerians must see democratisation beyond the narrow lenses of majority having its way and minority its say. As Harris and Reilly (1998: 17) rightly indicate, democracy has the capacity to secure peace for all groups without reference to their numerical strength: ...democratic structures in their myriad permutations, can offer an effective means for the peaceful handling of deep-rooted differences through inclusive, just and accountable frameworks... Democratic systems of government have a degree of legitimacy, inclusiveness, flexibility and capacity for constant adaptation that enable deep-rooted conflicts to be managed peacefully. It is now a cliché to justify identity revivalism and militia action in Nigeria by reference to the years of military rule that preceded the reintroduction of partisan political activities on May 29, 1999. With good governance, democracy has the potentials to help Nigeria creatively manage rather than mismanage her diversity. The appeal of democracy as a medium for the management of conflicts in an ethnically diverse society therefore transcends the conduct of free, fair and participatory elections, to fostering of group bargaining, trade-off, interest negotiation, consultation 94

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and consensus building. These constitute the critical elements for dialogue among rational autonomous individuals and also serve as levers for building peace in a multi-ethnic state. For, like a chain, Nigeria can only be as strong as the weakest link among her federating units. The key actors in Nigeria's development must constantly monitor how well the socio-political and economic parameters respond to the issues of justice, equity, fairness, transparency and accountability against the backdrop of decades of impunity, claims of marginalisation and unbridled corruption. At present, one of the development challenges in Nigeria is for the institutions charged with democratisation to facilitate the identification and recognition of the pockets of minority voices that are struggling for space in the country’s political and economic landscape. The relevant agencies of the government must enlarge the threshold for gathering and processing information considering that not enough of conversation took place during the decades of military rule. To address this situation, a lot of inter-agency cooperation would be required among the essential structures designated for democratisation in Nigeria. These include the Legislature, Executive, Judiciary, Political Parties, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the Media, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), Development Partners, Religious leaders, Traditional Rulers, Village Councils, etc. The expectation is that every Nigerian should be mobilised to participate in the processes leading to the conduct of credible and transparent elections as a basis for a peaceful political transition and sustainable development. The insights that have been presented in this monograph would require further in-depth analysis, development and transformation into action-oriented practice. It is suggested that stakeholders of conflict and development in Nigeria should work towards synergies that will contribute to the strengthening of the mechanisms for proactive conflict interventions as a means of preserving inter-personal and intergroup relationships that are so vital to the sustenance of a peaceful society. The policy agenda for this should include a national strategic vision that institutionalises safeguards against political, economic, cultural and structural violence.

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Notes and References Avruch, K. and Black, P. W. (1991) “The Culture Question and Conflict Resolution”, Peace and Change, 16 (1), 22-45. Francis, Diana (2002) People, Peace and Power: Conflict Transformation in Action, London: Pluto Press. Arinze, Cardinal Francis (2004) Building Bridges: Interreligious Dialogue on the Path to World Peace, New York: New City Press Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (2003) Strategic Conflict Assessment: Consolidated and Zonal Reports, Abuja: IPCR. Harris, P. and Reilly, B. (1998), Democracy and Deep-rooted Conflict: Options for Negotiators, Stockholm: International IDEA.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY/ FURTHER READING Adedeji, Adebayo (1999) Comprehending and Mastering African Conflicts: The Search for Sustainable Peace and Good Governance (ed.), London: Zed Books. Adekanye, J.B. (1995) “Structural Adjustment, Democratisation, and Rising Ethnic Tensions in Africa”, Development and Change, Volume 26 (2), pp.355-374. Ake, Claude (2000) The Feasibility of Democracy in Africa, Dakar: CODESRIA. Albert, I. O. (2001) Introduction to Third Party Intervention in Community Conflicts, Ibadan: John Archers. Albert, I. O. (2001) Building Peace, Advancing Democracy: Experience with Third party interventions in Nigeria's conflicts (ed.), Ibadan: Petraf/John Archers. Anderson, Benedict, (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections of the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, Ithacha, NY: Cornell University Press. Ashmore, R. D., Jussim, L. and Wilder, D. (2001) Social Identity, intergroup conflict and conflict reduction (ed.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Asuni, J. (2002) Peace-building for Sustainable Development in the Niger Delta, Abuja: Academic Associates PeaceWorks. Avruch, K. and Black, P. W. (1991), “The Culture Question and Conflict Resolution”, Peace and Change, 16 (1): 22-45. Avruch, K. (1998), Culture and Conflict Resolution, Washington, DC: USIP. Azar, E. (1990) The Management of Protracted Social Conflict: Theory & cases, Worcester: Darmouth Publications. Bates, A. P. (1967) The Sociological Enterprise, Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Bayart, Jean-Francois (1999) The Criminalization of the state in Africa, Oxford: International African Institute in Association with James Currey. Bercovitch, J. and Rubin, J. Z. (1992) Mediation in IR: Multiple Approaches to Conflict Management, Basingstoke: Macmillan (Palgrave). Berman, B. (1984) Structure and Process in the Bureaucratic States of Colonial Africa in Development and Change Volume 97

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15. Berman, B. (1992) Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa, London: J. Currey. Bernal, Martin (1987), Black Athena: Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization, volume 1, London: Free Association Books. Best, S.G. (1996) Religion, politics and conflict in northern Nigeria: an historical analysis with two case studies, University of Bradford: Department of Peace Studies. Boer, Wiebe (2001) “A perpective on the Post-colonial roots of identity and conflict” in Building Peace, Advancing Democracy, Albert, I. O. (ed.), Ibadan: John Archers. Boer, Wiebe (2000) “To build a nation where peace and justice shall reign: A report on OTI Nigeria Conflict Resolution Initiatives” December. Boutros-Ghali, Boutros, (1992) An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peacekeeping, New York: United Nations. Broome, Benjamin, (1998) 'Overview of Conflict Resolution Activities in Cyprus', Cyprus Review, volume 10, number 1, spring. Burton, J. W. (1979) Deviance, Terrorism and War: The process of solving unsolved Social and Political problems, London: Martin Robson. Burton, J.W. (1996) Conflict Resolution: Its Language and Processes, London: The Scarecrow Press. Bush, R. A. B. and Folger, J. P. (1994) The Promise of Mediation, San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass Inc. Publishers. Bush, K. (2000) “The Logic of PCIA” Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA), Colombo, Newsletter Volume IV/Issue VI, November/December 2000. Chipman, John, (1993) Managing the Politics of Parochialism, Survival volume 35, number 1. Chopra, Jarat, (1998) The Politics of Peace Maintenance, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Curl, Adam (1995) Another Way: Positive Response to Contemporary Violence, Oxford: Jon Carpenter Publishing. Diamond, Louise, and McDonald, John, (1991) Multi-Track Diplomacy, Grinnell: Iowa Peace Institute. 98

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DFID (2002) Conducting Conflict Assessments: Guidance Notes, London: DFID. DFID (2002) Conducting Conflict Assessments: An Introduction, London: DFID. Duffield, M. (2001) Global Governance and the New Wars, London: Zed Press. Essential Action and Global Exchange (2000) “Oil for Nothing: Multinational Corporations, Environmental Destruction, Death and Impunity in the Niger Delta”, http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/Africa/Nigeria.asp Federici, Silvia (2000) “War, Globalization, and Reproduction” Peace and Change, Volume 25 Number 2, pp.153-165. Festinger, Leon and Deutsch, Morton, (1973) The Resolution of Conflict, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Fisher, R., (1997) Interactive Conflict Resolution, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Francis, Diana (2002) People, Peace and Power: Conflict Transformation in Action, London: Pluto Press. Fryer, M. (2003) “Life as a Conflict Resolution Training Development Officer”, Peace Studies News, Issue 33, Autumn: Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford. Galtung, J. & Wirak, A. (1976) “Human Needs, Human Rights & Theory of Development”, Paper No. 37, Conflict Peace Research Chair Oslo, 1976. Galtung, J. (1980) “The Basic Need Approach”, in Human Needs: A contribution to the current debate, Lederer, K. Galtung, J. and Antal, D. (eds.), Cambridge: Gunn & Heinn. Galtung, J., Jacobsen, C. G. and Brand-Jacobsen, K. F. (2000) Searching for Peace: The road to TRANSCEND, London: Pluto Press. Goodhand, J. (2001) Conflict Assessments: A Synthesis Report, London: Centre for Defence Studies. Goodhand, J. & N. Lewer (2001) NGOs and Mainstreaming Conflict Prevention, in CPN Yearbook 2000/2001. Harris, Peter & Reilly, Ben (Eds.) (1998) Democracy and Deep-rooted Conflict: Options for Negotiators, Stockholm: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. Hartzell, Caroline A. (1999) 'Explaining the Stability of Negotiated Settlements to Intrastate Wars' Journal of Conflict

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Resolution, volume 43, number 1. Herbst, J. (1996/1997) “Responding to State Failure in Africa” International Security, Vol. 21 (3), pp.120-144. Hopgood, Stephen, (2000) 'Reading the Small Print in Global Civil Society' Millennium, volume 29, number 1. Horowitz, D. L. (1985) Ethnic Groups in Conflict, Berkeley: University of California Press. Huntington, Samuel (1968) Political Order in Changing Societies, London: Yale University. Ibeanu, O. and Onu, G. (2001) Ethnic Groups and Conflict in Nigeria, Ibadan. Ikelegbe, A. O. 2001. “The perverse manifestation of civil society: evidence from Nigeria”, Journal of Modern African Studies 39 (1):1-24. Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (2003), Strategic Conflict Assessment: Consolidated and Zonal Reports. IPCR/AAPW (2001) Report of the Conflict Transformation Workshop organised for youth leaders of Soku, Elem-Sangama, and Oluasiri (unpublished), Abuja: IPCR. Jeong, Ho-Won (ed.), (1999) The New Agenda For Peace Research, Aldershot: Ashgate. Jones, D., (1999) Cosmopolitan Mediation, Manchester: University of Manchester Press. Joseph, R. (1991) Prebendal Politics in Nigeria, Ibadan: Spectrum Books. Kaldor, Mary, (1999) New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era, Cambridge: Polity Press. Kraybill, R. (2001) Principles of good process design, pp.173-183, in Luc Reychler and Thania Paffenholz (eds.) Peace building: A field Guide, Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Kumar, Krishna (1998) Post conflict elections, democratisation and International assistance (ed.) London: Rienner Publishers. Lake, D. A. and Rothchild, D. (Eds.) (1996) Ethnic fears and global engagement: the international spread and management of ethnic conflict, San Diego: Institute on Global Conflict. Lederach, J. P. (2003) The Little Book of Conflict Transformation, Intercourse: Good Books. Lederach, J. P. (1997) Building Peace: Sustainable 100

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Reconciliation in Divided Societies, Washington: U.S. Institute of Peace Press. Leonhardt, Manuela (2001) Ownership, Purposes and Approaches Towards a Unified PCIA Methodology, in The Berghof Handbook for Conflict Transformation, November 2001, Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management. Lijphart, A. (1989) “The power-sharing approach” in Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies, Montville, J.V. (ed.), Lexington: Lexington Books. Lloyd, P. (1966) The new elite of Tropical Africa: Studies presented and discussed at the sixth International African Seminar (ed.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Luckham, Robin (1971) The Nigerian Military: A sociological analysis of authority and revolt, London: Cambridge University press. Lund, M. (2000) Improving conflict prevention by learning from experience: issues, approaches and results, pp.63-88, in Lund, Michael & G. Rasamoelina (eds.), The Impact of Conflict Prevention Policy Cases, Measures, Assessments. SWP-Conflict Prevention Network Yearbook 1999/2000, Baden-Baden:Nomos. Lund, M. et al. (2001) The Effectiveness of Civil Society Initiatives in controlling violent conflicts and building peace, A study of Three Approaches in the Greater Horn of Africa. Washington, Management Systems International, Inc. Maier, Karl (2000) This House has fallen: Midnight in Nigeria, New York: Public Affairs, xvii. Marshall, W. et al. (2001) Future Directions for USAID Support to Conflict Mitigation in Nigeria, Burlington: ARD Maslow, Abraham H. (1954) Motivation and Personality, New York: Harper and Row. McDonald, John W. (2003), “Multi-Track Diplomacy” in Beyond Intractability, Burges, G. and Burges H. (Eds.), Boulder: University of Colorado. Miall, Hugh, Ramsbotham, Oliver & Woodhouse, Tom (1999) Contemporary Conflict Resolution, Cambridge: Polity Press. Modelski, G. Principles of World Politics, New York: Free Press, 1972. Nordlinger, E.A. (1972) Conflict Regulation in Divided

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Societies, Cambridge MA: Harvard Centre for International Affairs. Onyewuenyi, Innocent (1993), The African origin of Greek Philosophy, Nsukka: University of Nigeria Press. Osaghae, Eghosa E. (2002 ) “Regulating Conflicts in Nigeria”, Peace Review 14 (2): 217-224. Osaghae, Eghosa E. (2001) “The Role and Function of Research in Divided Societies: The Case of Africa” in Researching Violently Divided Societies, Marie Smyth and Gillian Robinson (eds.), London: Pluto Press. ___________ (2001) The Management of the National Question in Nigeria, Ibadan. Oshita, O. O. (2003) Conflict Mitigation in Nigeria: The Strategic Conflict Assessment, Conflict, Security and Development 3:2, August, Carfax Publishing, 252-263. __________ (2001) Philosophy, Education and Environment, Calabar: University of Calabar Press. Otite, O. and Albert, I.O. (1999) Community Conflicts in Nigeria: Management, Resolution and Transformation, Ibadan: Spectrum Books. Paris, Roland (2001) “Wilson's Ghost: The Faulty Assumptions of Post Conflict Peace building” in Turbulent Peace: The challenges of managing international conflict, Chester A. Crocker, et al. (eds.), Washington: United States Institute of Peace. Rawls, John (1973) A Theory of Justice, London: Oxford University Press. Reimann, Cordula (2002) “'All You Need Is Love' … and What About Gender? Engendering Burton's Human Needs Theory”, Working Paper 10, Centre for Conflict Resolution, Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford. Reinermann, D. (2002) “Think Peace”: Proposed Approach to a Joint Strategic Conflict Assessment in Nigeria, Presented at the Culture and Conflict Syndicate of the Culture and Development Workshop, Abuja, March 19. Reychler, Luc (2002) Report of Initial Conflict Impact Assessment, MPP3 EU, Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers, 23 January (unpublished). Rice, Edward (1988) Wars of the third kind: Conflict in Underdeveloped countries, Berkeley: University of California 102

Bibliography/ Further Reading

Press. Richmond, O. P. (2002) Maintaining Order: Making Peace, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Rodney, Walter (1972) London: Bogle-L'ouverture Publications. Rotchchild, D. and Olorunsola, V. (Eds.) (1983) State versus Ethnic Claims: African Policy dilemmas, Westview Press. Ryan, Stephen (1995) Ethnic Conflict and International Relations (second edition), Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing Company Limited. Sa'ad, Abdul-mumin (1999) Continuity and Change in the methods of conflict-resolution in some north-eastern Nigerian communities, Journal of Social Sciences & Administration, Vol.1 No.1, June. Sandole, D. J. D. (1999) Capturing the Complexity of Conflict: Dealing with violent ethnic conflicts of the post-cold war era, London: Pinter. Short, Clare (1999) Memorandum from the Secretary of State for International Development, 9 June, 1998. International Development Committee; Conflict Prevention and Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Volume II, Minutes of Evidence and Appendices, London: The Stationery Office, July 28. Sklar, R. (1963) Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an emergent African nation, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Slim, Hugo (1997) Doing the Right Thing: Relief Agencies, Moral Dilemmas and Moral Responsibility in Political Emergencies and War, Studies on Emergencies and Disaster Relief, Report No. 6, Uppsala, Sweden: The Nordic Africa Institute. Smyth, Marie & Robinson, Gillian (eds.) (2001) Researching Violently Divided Societies: Ethical and Methodological Issues, London: Pluto Press. Stewart, Frances and FitzGerald, Valpy (2001) War and Underdevelopment Volume One: The Economic Consequences of War, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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APPENDICES APPENDIX A Table of Multi-level and multivariate factors in conflict causation in Nigeria. Security Political Economic Social Small-arms TNCs influencing Influence of Transnational proliferation politics (for World Bank and religious links Security-sector-reform instance, regime International Refugee influx from agenda-driven support/liquidation, Monetary Fund Liberia, Sierra Leone, Transnational sponsorship of (IMF) and TNCs Niger, Cote d’Ivoire. corporations (TNCs) candidates) International Colonial legacy. involved in security debt used in Trans-border armed Trans-border armed manipulating banditry. banditry. economic policy Heavy-handed Federal structural Mono-cultural Politicisation of National level military response. leadership issues. economy (oil). religious issues (such Culture of impunity Weak institutions. Corruption. as Sharia). Politically motivated Threat of return of Inequitable Exclusion of civil assassinations. military. distribution of society from policy Poor response to resources. issues. early warning and Poor industrial Youth alienation and conflict. base. Unemployment Civil-society Rural–urban exclusion from migration. policy issues Media not Politics of the constructive. trichotomy of Colonial legacy. ethnic majorities. Low capacity of Money politics. Corruption Unequal citizenship. State level police. Politics based on State/federal Indigene/settler Involvement of police ethnic majorities. relationship disputes. as parties in conflict. Electoral Failure to Pastoralist/cultivator Lack of confidence in malpractice. Deliver on tensions. police system. Corrupt judiciary. development. Money-driven nonBorder disputes. Land issues governmental Chieftain disputes. (uncertainties organisations (NGOs). over land use). Media not constructive. International /regional level

Local level

Privatisation of security, including Bakassi Boys, O’odua Peoples Congress (OPC), Egbesu, Agaba.

Political links to gangsterism (‘area boys’ - vagrants, for instance). Political intimidation. Political manipulation of traditional institutions.

Poverty. Lack of incentives for rural farmers such as absence of loans and accessible markets.

(Source: Adapted from SCA Phase One Report, 2002).

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Decline of health and education services Disillusionment Youth alienation and criminality/anomie Rising immorality Acceptance of violence (including domestic violence) Poor communication.

APPENDIX B

Consolidated plan of action for the implementation of the SCA report Between July and October 2002, IPCR in collaboration with USAID, DFID, The World Bank and UNDP, carried out a Strategic Conflict Assessment of Nigeria. The methodology was an adaptation of one used by DFID elsewhere which analyses conflict in terms of causes, actors and dynamics; responses to conflict; and, policy options and strategies at the different levels of government, civil society, and international organisations. The actions and reactions of various actors and the policy options and strategies adopted in response to conflict are contained in the SCA Report (2003). The Report concludes that: 1) Military rule impacted in a common manner on all the geopolitical zones of Nigeria in terms of the issues and feelings of deprivation and marginalisation that gave rise to the widespread and multi-faceted conflict being witnessed today. 2) This has led to a political crisis in which political actions are often dominated by self-interest and money (prebendal politics). 3) The nation’s dependence on oil revenues from a relatively small part of the country has exacerbated this crisis. 4) Violent conflict represents a serious threat to democracy. 5) The setting up of IPCR represents a paradigm shift from government’s traditional response to conflict, which had been almost entirely reactionary and suppressive, by armed security units (the police and military). 6) Civil society (with support from international donors) has been active in research in local peacemaking but lacks strategic vision and engagement. 7)The media have not yet played a constructive role in conflict

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regulation. 8) Business leaders and investors, although potentially critical stakeholders, should play a role in conflict resolution. 9) The government and civil society have either worked in isolation or even in mutual distrust. 10) Government’s strategic vision would encourage collaboration between parties, unite significant forces to limit violent conflict and support the development of democracy as the long-term protection against the spread of violence. The 2nd Stakeholders’ Workshop of Peace Research and Conflict Resolution held in 2003 developed a multi-track Plan of Action for implementing the SCA Report. Six syndicates were tasked with various themes viz., (a) Security Sector Reform; (b) Early Warning and Preventive Action; (c) Political Conflict; (d) Social and Economic. Causes of Conflict; (e) Role of civil society; and (f) Mainstreaming Conflict Prevention. The issues covered under these subheads were some of the critical concerns identified for attention based on a timeframe of short, medium and long term, including a description of activities, key actors, and success indicators. Below is a narrative summarising the recommendations of stakeholders at that Workshop. 1. Security sector (Police, border security & judiciary) reform with emphasis on retraining for greater professionalism, provision of logistic support and enhanced staff welfare – this was aimed at reforming the security sector and the judiciary to be more efficient and corruption-free. Reform of border security forces (with help from Interpol) to control trans-border crimes and the influx of mercenaries from neighbouring countries, monitoring and control of SALW, human and drug trafficking. 2. Control of ethnic militia – this was to forestall the rising incidence of militia activities and power across the country, but particularly in the Niger Delta, e.g., Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND); South East e.g. Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), Bakassi Boys; South West e.g., Odu’a Peoples Congress (OPC), and North East, e.g. ‘The Taliban’. 3. Non-involvement of the armed forces in police duties – this was part of the overall plan to deepen democratic culture

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through the subordination of the military to civil political authority as enshrined in the 1999 Federal Constitution of Nigeria. 4. Database creation on early warning indicators – this arose from the need for building institutional capacity for proactive intervention to de-emphasise the reliance on the reactive model in preference for early detection and early response to conflict indicators. 5. Pastoralist/Farmer Conflict mitigation – arising from the need to reduce tension between the parties involved in this type of conflict, which was found to be pervasive in the country. Work to create a framework for preventing pastoralist-farmer conflicts in the country. 6. Reports of Tribunals, Administrative Panels, Commissions of Enquiry, etc. – the need to investigate the reasons and limitations inhibiting implementation of recommendations of panels and commissions of enquiry. 7. Confidence building – to create joint projects in disputed areas; promote peace education in communities through the identification and mobilisation of peace mediators to facilitate dialogue between conflicting parties. 8. Democracy & good governance - Ways of promoting democracy and good governance as a necessary condition for citizen loyalty and obedience to constituted authority. 9. Conflict analysis at all levels of government – training of public officers, particularly those responsible for conflict prevention and management at all levels of government (federal, state and local government) in conflict analysis. The idea is to enable them become more aware of the conflict environment and the implications of policy for peace and conflict. 10. Transparency and accountability in government, corporate management & public affairs - Promote transparency and accountability in combating the pervasive problem of greed and grievances that generate crisis in the system. Struggle to meet the basic benchmarks for democratic practice.

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11. Code to Govern Partisan Politics - Institution of a Code of Conduct for Political Parties (which includes sanctioning of party members who directly or indirectly foment violent conflicts). The Electoral Act 2006 has tried to address the worrisome aspects of the public behaviour of political actors in Nigeria. 12. Reconstructing Nigeria's Federalism – this arose from the felt need for a constitutional and fiscal federalism, including the struggle for resource control. Redress the imbalance in fiscal allocations & Federal/state sectoral responsibilities. 13. Improvement of the electoral process – based on the felt need for a truly independent and strong electoral body with the capacity to midwife a free, fair and transparent election to prosecute Nigeria’s 2007 elections. Reconstitute INEC to become a truly independent umpire in the electoral process in Nigeria. 14. Capacity of the State to govern - Capacity of the state to provide critical social services (security, infrastructure, conflict management). Evidence showed that the state demonstrated a weak capacity to deal with cases of impunity, abuse of human rights and other security threats. 15. Enhancement of Civil Society - Improve the capacity of civil society to hold public officials accountable. Strengthen the capacity of civil society to serve as a moderating influence on government. 16. Reduction of religious crisis - Improving the capacity of religious leaders to use non-violent mechanisms for conflict prevention and resolution. This is against the backdrop of troublemakers deploying religious differences as basis for unleashing violence on others. 17. Peace Education - Developing Peace education curricula and introducing short training courses for peace workers and mediators. 18. Integrating Conflict Prevention into Policy Making at all levels - Integrating Conflict Prevention strategies into Policy Making, Implementation and Evaluation to ensure sustainable peace in the society. Underlying this was the

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discovery that the incidences of top-down public policies generating violent conflicts or intensifying existing conflict fault-lines were rife in Nigeria. 19. Establishing peaceful relationships between multinational corporations, host communities and the government - Mainstreaming Conflict Prevention mechanisms in the relationship amongst the stakeholders in extractive industries, especially in the Niger Delta. The dominant experience in the country pointed to the host communities and multinational corporations engaged in violent vertical conflict with host communities usually the victims. Review of the legal framework for extractive business operations in host communities for deriving & distributing revenues including taxation have been suggested. 20. Introduction of Peace-building and peace education into both formal & non-formal education curricula – this arose from the need to integrate education for peace-building into the curricula from the elementary to the tertiary levels of education in Nigeria.

While some blamed the political inertia suffered by the Presidential Implementation Committee (PIC) on the personality conflict between President Olusegun Obasanjo and his Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, others attributed the derailment of the work-plan for the implementation of the NAP to the dearth of funds for an integrated and multi-track implementation of the NAP. The PIC, which was charged with the management of the NAP under the chairmanship of Vice President Atiku Abubakar, went into a lull at the end of 2005, leaving the NAP unattended. So far, the IPCR and some of her partners have resorted to a piecemeal gradual implementation of aspects of the NAP within the framework of inter-agency collaboration.

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Index A Academic Associate Peace Works 53 Action Aid 56 Actor Trigger Conflict model 65 Advisory Committee 66, 67 African epistemology 88, 89 African Union 11, 53 Aguleri-Umuleri 71, 90 Anambra State 71, 90 B Balewa,Tafawa 71 Bayelsa 30, 39, 54, 82, 85, 102 British Government's Department of International Development 56 Bush, Kenneth 13 C Capacity Building and Brainstorming Training Workshop 58 Chevening IV, 10 Chinese 17, 77 Christianity 34 Civil Society Organisations 11, 11, 95 Cold War 19, 103 Communication-intensive training 83 community based organisations 54 community conflicts 10, 19, 23, 30, 39, 43, 49, 52, 61, 97, 102 Conflict intervention IV, 10, 12, 13, 14, 23, 24, 26, 34, 37, 45, 46, 49, 50, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 62, 68, 78, 81, 83, 84, 88, 89 Conflict resolution IV, 11, 11, 12, 16, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 33, 37, 42, 45, 49, 50, 52, 54, 55, 64, 73, 76, 77, 81, 83, 84, 86, 88, 89, 92, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 107 Cross River State 71, 90 D Delta State 39 democratic consolidation 91, 93 E Economic Community for West African States 53 Elem-Sangama 39, 53, 61, 100 Essential Action and Global Exchange 81, 85, 99

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European Union Micro Project Programme 25 F Fourth Republic 11 G Government and Civil Society 21, 24, 28, 31, 72, 78, 79, 107 grassroots platforms 49 H Hausa-Fulani 35 Hickson, Claire 58 historicize conflict 33 Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission 32, 42 I Ife-Modakeke 51, 71, 90 INCORE 11, 57 Independent National Electoral Commission 95 Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution IV, 11, 12, 21, 29, 42, 52, 73, 86, 92, 96, 100 International Monetary Fund 56 international non-governmental organisations IV IPCR IV, 10, 11, 11, 12, 13, 21, 28, 31, 33, 38, 42, 52, 53, 54, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 73, 77, 79, 83, 86, 96, 100, 106, 110 J Judicial Commissions of Enquiry 51 Justice Aniagolu Tribunal 51 Justice Babalakin Judicial Commission of Enquiry 51 Justice Chukwudifu Oputa 41 Justice Idoko Judicial Commission of Enquiry 51 Justice Mamman Nasir Boundary Commission 51 Justice Nnaemeka Agu's Judicial Commission of Enquiry 51 Justice Rahila Cudjoe Commission of Enquiry 51 L LEEDS 11, 82, 83 Liquefied Natural Gas Plant 53 Lloyd, Peter 23 Local Government Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy 82 Lord Lugard 36 M Maier,Karl 24

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militant youth 40 multinational oil companies 9, 68 N National Action Plan 9, 12, 15, 70, 72 National Directorate for Employment 9, 79 National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy 59, 82 National Emergency Management Agency 59 National Park Service 56 National Peace Policy 9, 53, 58 National Poverty Eradication Programme 14, 79 NEEDS 9, 17, 18, 25, 27, 31, 33, 35, 36, 37, 40, 42, 59, 60, 66, 68, 69, 71, 72, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 90, 91, 93, 99, 102 NGOs IV, 11, 25, 27, 28, 40, 48, 49, 53, 54, 55, 57, 60, 64, 69, 81, 83, 99 Niger Delta 9, 14, 40, 54, 68, 69, 70, 80, 81, 82, 85, 90, 97, 99, 107, 110 Niger Delta Development Commission 9, 14, 80 Nigeria Police Force 51 Northern Ireland 57 O Obas 20, 35 Obasanjo, Olusegun 37, 41, 82, 110 Odi 67, 85 Office of Transition Initiatives 9, 24, 56 Oluasiri 39, 53, 61, 100 Open Society Initiative for West Africa 53 P PCIA 9, 13, 16, 29, 98, 101 Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment 9, 13 peace-enhancing activities 63 Political ethnicisation 32 political independence 36, 37 proactive studies 51 problem-solving workshop 26 R Rawls,John 78 Rivers 30, 39, 54, 67, 102 S school-based peace education programmes 76 Security actors 67 SEEDS 9, 35, 71, 82, 83 Service Compact 9, 79 Sklar, Richard 23

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Society for Peace Studies and Practice 78 Soku 39, 53, 61, 100 Southeast 20 State Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy 82 Stereotyping 89 Strategic Conflict Assessment 9, 11, 12, 15, 16, 29, 38, 42, 54, 56, 58, 62, 63, 72, 73, 74, 83, 86, 90, 96, 100, 102, 106 structural adjustment policy 59 structural and cultural violence 27, 66, 73 T Tiv 39, 68, 88, 90 Tracks of Multi-track Diplomacy 11 TRANSCEND 38, 66, 73, 78, 86, 91, 93, 99 Transnational Corporations 68 U UN Millennium Development Goals 59 United Nations Children Fund 9, 59 United Nations Development Programme 56, 63 United Nations Millennium Development Goals 82 United States 9, 24, 56, 61, 64, 81, 102 University of Ibadan 30, 57, 78 V videoconferencing 67 Village Councils 95 W Warri conflict 51 World Bank 11, 54, 56, 58, 59, 63, 64, 67, 106 Worldwide Fund for Nature 56 Y Yoruba 35, 88 Z Zangon-Kataf crisis 51

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