CHAPTER ONE
- INTRODUCTION
- BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The issue of conflict has become one of the regular headlines in the daily news of the world media today. Many countries in the world have suffered from one conflict or another, ranging from religious, civil, political, cultural, regional and ethnic violent such as in Nigeria, former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Liberia, Cambodia and so on. The most disturbing part of these acts of conflicts around the globe is that most of them have traced their roots to religion. Even some perpetrators of these acts of conflicts most of the time justify their actions with religion, thereby making religion an object of conflict.
Prevalent violent conflict on the African continent has been addressed by numerous scholars, advancing various reasons to explain the continuous conflicts on the continent.
The scholars (such as Jackson 2000, 2002; Okoth and Ogot 2000; Adedeji 1999; Khadiagala 2006; and Taiser and Mathews 1999) agree in their description of Africa as the least developed continent economically, yet the most conflict prone politically. What has been the main focus of these scholars is the shift in Africa‟s conflicts, from conflicts between states to conflicts within states, internal
conflicts, civil wars, intra-state conflicts or new wars (Kaldor 1999:33-118; 2006:72-94; 2012:71-118).
In the post-independent period, statehood in Africa has been characterized by internal wars. Every region has experienced armed conflict at some time since the early 1960‟s (Busumtwi 1999:259). Writing in 2002, Jackson observed how in the last twenty years, internal conflict has occurred in half of Africa‟s countries. For example in the mid 2001 there were serious internal conflicts in Algeria,, Chad, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Guinea, Liberia, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Angola. Many other African states face instability, high levels of domestic political violence or rebel movements such as in Lesotho, South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria (Jackson 2002). This trend of events continues to this date and Africa has arguably had the most significant share of these conflicts (Souare 200:369).