Peace-building as a panacea for Ethnic Agitations and Militancy in Nigeria

Abstract

Nigeria has been battling with many security problems ranging from ethnic agitations, militancy, Armed Robbery and Kidnapping as well as terrorism and insurgency.  These security problems havebeen   threatening the corporate existence of the country.  Ethno nationalism has taken over national integration; threatened national security, configuration and peace of the country as well as the foundation of oneness of the country as laid by the founding fathers and heroes past. The application of “coercive measures and stick” by the government to stem the tide has not yielded any meaningful result. Therefore this paper examines peace building as a panacea for ethnic agitations and militancy in Nigeria. The paper is a qualitative research that relies on documentary data to explore different literature on peace building as a strategy for resolving conflicts, while content analysis was used to systematically analyze the unstructured materials that contain relevant data for the paper.  The paper found that ethno nationalism has led to agitations for self-determination and secession, resource control, religious caliphacy, political inclusion, political hegemony and equity in land resource usage. The paper concludes that it is only through peace building that Nigeria can wriggle itself out of ethnic agitations and militancy, enthrone national consciousness instead of ethno nationalism. We recommend that Nigerian governments from Local Government Council to the Federal government should always adopt peace building measures in handling ethnic agitations and militancy as well as other armed conflict in the country and not to resort to use of force only.