Socio-political conflict prevention and community harmony in Nigera: An analysis of culture neglect in the Boko Haram insurgency

Abstract

The paper analyzed the Boko Haram insurgency to show the culture neglect in political conflict prevention and community harmony in Nigeria. It relied on unstructured available data, which were collected from secondary documents for descriptive analysis of a non-survey and nonexperimental qualitative study. Cultural determinism was found a suitable theoretical framework based on the papers position that pluralist paradigm, conflict theory and communication theory which bear relevance to the study are all culture deterministic. The paper revealed that Culture is the nexal gap between socio-political conflict prevention and community harmony in Nigeria. It observed that the absence of an active national culture with capacity to make divergent interests of sub-cultures or component units conform to national interest in Nigeria was the vacuum that led to the failure of early warning signals and mechanisms to prevent the Boko Haram conflict. It recommended long term and short term culture-sensitive pathways to harmony in the Nigerian national community and cautioned that the greatest danger facing communities at all levels, which consciously or otherwise, undermine the culture-dimension to socio-political relations of conflict within it, is unending or at least, not near-ending crisis, conflict, and disharmonious living, even an outright dismemberment.