Peace Building Mechanism: Alternative to Dispute Resolution. A Study of Calabar, Nigeria

Abstract

This study focuses on peace building mechanism as an Alternative to Dispute Resolution. It sought to establish how the people of Calabar, in southern Nigeria have used it as an effective indigenous peace building mechanism to prevent, mitigate, manage, and resolve conflicts, and to draw the attention of the governments as to streamline its use as an indigenous mechanism to make the country stable and peaceful. The study was conducted in Calabar Municipal Council of Cross River State, Nigeria. The methodology used in this research was collection of information from primary sources through interviews and questionnaire administration as well as from secondary sources through library research and internet. The data used for the project were the responses of teachers, council staff and traditional rulers randomly selected from the research area. The Mean and Simple Percentage Method formulae were used to analyze the data and interpret the results. The results revealed that the people of Calabar have developed widely used and effective indigenous mechanisms for the prevention and resolution of conflicts. The study concluded that there are latent political and socio-cultural conflicts threatening the peace of Cross River State; and recommended that these indigenous preventive mechanisms should be recognized and backed by law to complement the efforts at resolving disputes in Nigeria. I. Introduction Peace has remained the most valued and indeed the greatest human need in history. Aristotle calls it the essence of human existence; and the world has never relented in the quest for peace and the termination of conflict. The 1648 treaty of peace in Westphalia which ushered in the modern nation state structure of political entities can be legitimately termed the real first attempt at securing planetary peace by mankind. The Congress of Vienna (1814-1815), the League of Nations (1918-1939) and now the United Nations (1945); are international efforts to achieve the goal of a collective security for humanity. Agwu (2007: xx) noted that the search for world peace is a persistent and interminable task; which unfortunately, has been consistently and tragically marred at the very critical junctures of their efforts. Conflict is as old as creation and it the greatest enemy of peace but a uniquely unavoidable part of man. It impinges on reality and attempts to infest all human actions. Sometimes, it is experienced within the individual or between individuals, and sometimes among groups, states and even transcends to other creatures. The fact that this phenomenon exists in all creation makes it difficult to understand. When conflict is resolved, there is bound to be peace. Conflict and peace have been subjects of investigations in political science, sociology, economics, psychology and other human sciences. The major concern has been how to give meaning to this phenomenon, diagnose its structures, locate its causes and attempt to find solutions and achieve peace. In spite of all the efforts, conflict appears to defy solutions by drawing individuals at dagger points, group as well as institutions at war and national at loggerheads. It has been of central concern not only to these categories but also to the national community and development agencies. While it has been a herculean task to terminate conflicts, the international system successfully prevented a third world war. The absence or lack of conflict management or peace building mechanisms in the early years of the Federation resulted in the 1967 Nigerian civil war. Though unable to terminate conflict, the Nigerian Federation rose to the challenge and successfully established effective peace building mechanisms that have prevented any other civil war in the country and held the federating units together for 43 years now. Despite the countrys recent relief from the Niger Delta insurgency, Nigeria is today faced with the challenge of Boko Haram. The causes of these crises in the Nigerian Federation have been fundamentally ethnic religion and politically based. Cross River State, like other states in Nigeria, has some conflict issues and the state recently joined the Federal Government of Nigeria in establishing the Multi-door Courthouse as an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanism.