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Conflict is inevitable in all human endeavours and according to Paige, a non-violent society is impossible because of three basic reasons: “First, man is a dangerous animal capable of killing by nature. Second, there will always be a scarcity of economic resources which in turn, will lead to violence. Third, violence may be used in the case of self-defence or defending loved ones”. This is why in our world, there will always be flurry of revolutions and violent conflicts, across many countries, Nigeria inclusive. As you are reading this article, the presidential election had held with the result being awaited.
Conflict, ordinarily, shouldn’t be a bad thing. It should just be a serious disagreement or argument, typically a protracted one. It is the interaction of the thesis with the anti-thesis that produce a synthesis. The meeting of a man and woman produces a child. Conflicts well managed always produce a new better thing. However, how we manage conflicts will decide whether it will be peacefully resolved leading to a better outcome or whether it will end in war. War is a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country. War in itself is an indication of a breakdown of law and order. It is anarchic in nature. The world has not been able to stop the level of savagery that go on in war. Facing this scenario, the world simply made laws to punish the offenders of war crimes during war.
The Russia-Ukraine war testifies to the destructive power of war. The Russian President, in a bid to restore the original map of the old Soviet Union, which included Ukraine, declared a special military action against Ukraine. He thought he will overrun Ukraine in weeks. He has already set up an alternative government for Ukraine in the event of the fall of Ukraine. Russia’s estimate was actually backed by the prediction of the United States that Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, will fall in four days. Unfortunately, all the predictions were wrong as Ukraine, through good leadership, mounted a strong and unprecedented resistance to the Russian aggression and ended up driving out the invading Russian forces out of Kyiv with heavy casualties on both sides.
Russia decided to downgrade their aspiration to just occupying some Ukrainian territories and Ukraine is fighting back to recover all. The cost of this war is better imagined. More than 150 thousand persons have been killed in gruesome manner. Ukrainian economy has dwindled. Russian economy is degraded every day as a result of the excruciating sanctions imposed against Russia by the Western Countries under the direction of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). No nation, after seeing this senseless carnage, will want to go to war, whether within it or without it.
Sudan was one of the richest and most powerful nations in Africa. It has land, human and material resources in abundance. The southern part of Sudan is blessed with immense deposit of crude oil. They lived in peace at independence. The Northern part has majority of Muslims, while the Southern part has majority of Christians. In 1989, Omar al-Bashir seized power in Sudan by force, through a coup d’etat, and implemented a hard-line interpretation of Islamic law that sought to make the country the vanguard of the Islamic world. His government adopted sharia law to guide the civil and criminal lives of the entire sudanese people. This led to the rebellion of the Southern Sudan which levied war against the central government and eventually led to the demise of Sudan as one indivisible and indissoluble country. The South broke away from the North and became a separate country supported by the whole world as most modern States are reluctant to tolerate any State run based on religion. They are aware that no State run on religion can guarantee the freedom, equality and justice of all its citizens or yield democracy dividends to its citizens because the human mind craves for freedom more than any possession. Even God created man a free moral agent and did not compel man to worship Him.
Unfortunately, when South-Sudan became independent, their internal weaknesses began to unfold. The country that hitherto was thought to be homogenous, started caving in to bitter armed conflicts due to ethnic rivalry. The ethnic group of the President of South Sudan and the ethnic group of the Vice President of South Sudan went into bitter competition as to which group will take over the leadership of South-Sudan. This conflict led to the destruction of the country leaving it to become a basket case rather than the food basket of Africa. The funds from oil exploration was channelled towards funding wars rather than fueling economic growth and sustainability. They have been killing each other till date. What this implies is that the greatest source of armed conflict in Africa is the mismanagement of our religious and ethnic differences. Any multi-ethnic, multi-religious country in Africa that wants to avoid armed conflict must proactively make laws and rules to recognise their diversity and make sure no religious or ethnic group is left behind.
Nigeria is more diverse than Sudan and will certainly be more volatile if any religion, whether Christianity or Islam, is forcefully foisted on the citizens or allowed to dominate others. This goes for any suspicion of the domination of other ethnic groups by any ethnic group. As a matter of fact, the first Nigeria civil war that nearly ended Nigeria started as a resistance to the perceived domination of other ethnic groups by Ndigbo and when the regime of the first Head of State of Igbo extraction was overthrown in a bloody coup, the rest of Nigerians went into genocidal war against Ndigbo that led to the destruction of the best military officers, engineers and scientists that Nigeria has ever produced. We lost more than one million citizens and innumerable number of children to hunger and kwashiokor. The national revenue that ought to have been used to develop Nigeria was used to kill each other. We have never recovered from that war till date. The standard of living of Nigerians was better before the war than after the war. Every reasonable citizen must avoid armed conflict at all costs because the cost is enormous.
Nigerian laws have made adequate provisions for the inclusion of every citizen, ethnic group, religious group in the composition of any government and in the conduct of its affairs. The 1999 Constitution made it compulsory in Section 14(3)(4) that our diversity shall be the basis of the composition of any government so that such government will command national unity and loyalty and give every citizen a sense of belonging. Section 15 is to the effect that the motto of our country, which is unity and faith, peace and progress, can only be realised if every government in power ensures the integration, participation and involvement of every citizen in that government whilst discrimination on the grounds of place of origin, sex, religion, status, ethnic or linguistic association or ties shall be prohibited.
It was disheartening to see two major political parties desecrating these lofty objectives of our laws to engender peace and unity among us and rather preferred to move towards a religious party and towards an ethnic party. The convention between North and South is for power to shift between them. The present President is a Fulani Muslim from the North. All parties were expected to zone the post of President to the South, but the PDP, rather manipulatively, retained it in the North for the continuation of the regime of another Fulani Northern Muslim for another eight years. This is a potential recipe for conflict as no section of the country wants to play second fiddle. The ideal thing would have been to vote them out. If therefore there’s any untoward method through which they find their way to power, it will create a potential source of conflict which must be managed in a way not to allow it degenerate into war to avoid the destructive cost of war
The APC on the other hand decided, to the chagrin of every Nigerian, to field a same-faith presidential ticket in a party where the same religion occupies the legislative and judicial branches of the government in power. APC has been reduced to a religious party in contradiction to Section 222(e) of the 1999 Constitution as amended. This has totally eliminated all other religions from the levers of political powers in Nigeria and has become a harbinger of conflicts. Above all, we must not allow a party to drive us to this level of precipice going forward in our national political life.
We can assure you that if any party that fulfilled the Constitutional provisions on the composition of government wins, it will engender national joy and peace which in turn will lead to progress and development. Such party must also reach out to other parties and as much as possible form a government of national unity that will guarantee the integration of all citizens for the peace and progress of our dear country. May we never fight any war again in Nigeria.
