Beyond the Legalistic and Mechanical Approaches to Conflict Management in Nigeria

Multiethnic and religious crises are exposing Nigeria to its greatest existential problem of all time. Calls for separation and self-determination are vociferous among Nigeria’s ethnic, religious, and socio-cultural groups. While Nigeria’s government and well-meaning organizations are engaging the problem, ongoing conversations on the matter focus on the potentials of legalistic and mechanical approaches to conflict management. Ethnic and religious conflicts in Nigeria are resisting these formulations and sustaining the path of destruction, pulverizing economic, social, human, and material resources. This paper supplements existing perspectives on conflict management in Nigeria with an ontological approach. It defends the need to explore the ego, the self, the I in managing conflicts in Nigeria. With categories and frameworks mined from existentialists philosophers, the paper advocates the development of systematic processes of reorientation based on the existentialist values of intersubjectivity, tolerance, dialogue, understanding, care, and solidarity as a tool against the religious and ethnic crisis in the country.