The Yorùbá’s Peacefulness Enhanced by an Informal Peace Education 

Abstract

This article is a review of the southwest Nigerian Yorùbá and their perceived peacefulness in the context of Nigeria as a country. It attempts to address the question of how peaceful the Yorùbá religious people are amidst the Nigeria unstable situation and in comparison, with the established peaceful societies (PS). In as much as the focus of peace and conflict studies has being to bring about peace in human societies and nations, peace researchers and practitioners have been working to resolve conflicts and support their subjects to stabilize their societies. Whilst academics and practitioners were focusing on resolving conflicts and resettling the communities and individuals affected by conflict and wars, other initially peaceful communities were beginning their own conflicts. The newly emerging conflict makes peacemaking efforts more difficult to achieve as O’Reilly rightly asserts (2016). To join other researchers to ameliorate the setbacks by attempting to sustain positive peace in human society, this study hereby focuses a relatively peaceful community [the Yorùbá] to find how they handle disputes, crises and conflicts that have the potential for violence, whilst maintaining its harmony. The first part of this paper provides a concise discussion about peace and conflict studies as it developed in the West followed by an outline of conflicts in Nigeria and amongst the Yorùbá to identify any gap to justify this inquiry. The paper ends with some clues on how peacefulness is retained in the multireligious community. This study argues for an informal peace education to support a mutual-reciprocal relationship between people of different beliefs to retain peacefulness in human society. NOTE: This article is taken from chapter 2 and the conclusion of the author’s doctoral thesis, with a few amendments.