Issue 10 – January 2015
TOPICS: West Africa, Nigeria, India, Community Conflict, Climate Change, Traditional Conflict Management
Coordinator:
Christian Chereji and Alexandra Mihali
Content – Sommaire:
ARTICLES in Issue 10 – January 2015:
Getting Smart and Scaling Through: Narcotics/Prostitutes’ Trafficking as Organized Crimes in Colonial and Post Colonial West Africa, C.1920-C.1998
Walter GAM NKWI
Abstract:
Conflict analysis and management are not a new phenomenon to students of history and
social sciences the world over. Conflicts either on organizational or international scale have received mediation and/or alternative dispute resolution in different parts of the world. This article focuses on West Africa as a zone where organised crime has been going on since the first decades of the 20th Century although much attention has been paid to terrorist organisations like the Boko Haram, AQIM and Janjaweed only recently. Using secondary and primary sources, the article examines more detail the way crimes have been organised in the region in the colonial and post-colonial periods. It examines the mobility of narcotics and prostitutes trafficking in the sub-region. More crucial to this article is the way regional and international organisations have attempted to mediate and bring to an end such conflict situation. From the sources gathered so far, the article maintains that narcotics and prostitution mobility have made West Africa the hub and the middle passage where drugs and prostitutes passed through to other parts of the world. Yet such a situation has received scant attention in a deeper historical perspective, a gap which this article sets out to fill. Conversely and more particularly, the drugs comes from as far as Latin America and South Africa and they are rooted back to Europe and United States while prostitutes have been migrating within the region and sometimes responsible for the movement of the drugs. What makes West Africa so unique in this trafficking? Which are the routes used in the organisation of the drug and prostitute trafficking? What constitutes the network of the traffickers? By confronting such questions, the article hopes to add to the budding literature and volume of knowledge that exists on drugs and prostitutes
trafficking.
Key words:
West Africa, organized crime, narcotics, prostitutes, conflict.
Desperate Guests, Unwilling Hosts: Climate Change-Induced Migration
and Farmer-Herder Conflicts in Southwestern Nigeria
Azeez OLANIYAN & Ufo OKEKE-UZODIKE
Abstract:
Discourses on the relationship between climate change and violent conflict have created
two opposing views of the enthusiasts and the skeptics, with the former arguing that there is a strong connection and the latter doubting it. This paper combines elements from the two lines of thought to assess the phenomenon of incessant farmer-herder conflicts in southwestern Nigeria. Presenting evidence collected from a town in southwestern Nigeria, the paper demonstrates not only the saliency of climate change but also its instigating influence in human migration and the associated violent conflicts in southwestern Nigeria. It argues that acute shortage in rainfalls, increasing dryness and scorching heat have resulted in depletion of water, flora, and fauna resources on the land. This has triggered forced migration of many cattle herders of the region to the lush wetter parts of the south in desperate search of grazing spaces. More often than not, however, the desperate guests (the grazers) have often been met by unwilling hosts (the farmers) in the wetter destinations, thereby setting in motion violent conflicts, which have increased and intensified since the late 1990s. However, the paper concludes that, on its own, climate change-induced migration seldom causes conflict unless enmeshed with the struggle for economic ascendancy, intolerance, ethnicity, insensitivity, an integration problem,
and state incapacity.
Key words:
Climate change, migration, farmers, herders, conflict and Nigeria.
On the Edge of Scarcity: Understanding Contemporary Community Conflicts in Odisha, India
Jagannath AMBAGUDIA
Abstract:
The contemporary state of Odisha, India, has been experiencing a series of ethnic, caste,
religious, resource-based, and political conflicts. These conflicts are the product of different magnitudes of deprivation, marginalization, and exploitation, which have created unrest among different communities and dissatisfaction with the state authorities. These experiences simply highlight antagonism, aggression, and resistance in a context in which the policy making process and administration respond through violent means. It presents a complex picture of contemporary violent community conflicts in Odisha by considering conflicts of Kandhamal and Narayanpatna within the broader framework of competition to gain control over, or access to, natural resources. The competition to control or access natural resources leads to the emergence of community conflict between the Adivasis (indigenous people) and non-Adivasis in Odisha. The growing insecurity among the Adivasis due to the gradual alienation of their resources to the non-Adivasis compel
them to engage in a conflictual relationship with the non-Adivasis, thereby threatening and creating insecurity for the latter.
Kew words:
community, assertion, conflict, Maoist, Odisha state, India.
Aspects of Traditional Conflict Management Practices Among the Ogoni
of Nigeria
Christian Radu CHEREJI & Charles WRATTO KING
Abstract:
Continuing their study of traditional practices in conlict management, the authors examine specific indigenous conflict resolution mechanisms developed by the Ogoni of Nigeria, with particular references to Igirebu, Neefenee, Aaba and Tua-gba-ken truth hearing assemblies. The paper reveals that the various approaches use in dealing with conflict, within traditional Ogoni society, provide unique opportunities for disputing parties to interact and reach an agreement through peaceful dialogue. It further takes into account some interesting aspects of Ogoni value systems, including the Sira-Culture, Yaa and Borgor.
Kew words:
Ogoni, Nigeria, traditional practices, conflict management, indigenous conflict resolution, value system, Igirebu, Neefenee, Aaba, Tua-gba-ken, Yaa, Sira, Borgor.
