The Imperative of Restructuring and Conflict Management in Nigeria

Abstract

The study examines the Nigerian State and the imperative of restructuring as conflict management strategy towards peace-building. The study adopts an expository and descriptive analytical framework. It traces the persistent conflicts and agitations to the dysfunctional structure of the Federal system and argues that historically, Nigeria is fraught with conflicts, some of them life threatening, others minor and pedestrian. It maintains that the imperative of restructuring is a sine-quo-non to sustainable conflict management and peace-building that will develop constructive relationships across ethnic and national boundaries to resolve injustice and transform structural conditions that generates deadly conflict. It revealed that the challenge facing the Nigerian nation is how to make conflicts constructive rather than destructive, marginal rather than fundamental, peripheral rather than pivotal. The study suggests that the Nigerian State needs attitudinal restructuring and systemic framework that will guarantee economic and political freedom of the minorities and the marginalized within the sovereign State and built a pluralist democratic State where the rights of all citizens are respected. It also seek to blend power with principle and reconcile authority with freedom, and put a robust peace infrastructure in place to play a preventive and mitigating role.