Mediating Ethnic Identities in Africa

Year 2015, Issue: 24, 215 - 228, 30.04.2015

Temisanren Ebıjuwa Adeniyi Gbadegesın

https://doi.org/10.20981/kuufefd.08132

Abstract

In recent times, African states have experienced multiple challenges. The most disturbing is the inability to evolve a sustainable culture of dialogue that is suitable for the mitigation of ethnic conflicts in contemporary Africa. It is this failure that has generated many other problems in other spheres.
These problems, in concert, have made the socio-political space largely that of frustration, despair and disappointment. This accounts for the social design of unhealthy alliances and the basis for the affirmation of parochial primordial frivolities at the detriment of a trans-national identity. But why have the affirmation of these primordial alliances and its attendant conflicts remain daunting, intricate and resilient, in spite of the several attempts by scholars to mitigate it?
The attempt in this paper will be to argue that extant discourse of the above concern fails because it ignores the value of the conditions for the practical realisation of agreement in situations of conflict. Specifically, the attempt here is to explore indigenous mediation strategies in arriving at trans-national identity in Africa, which will be inclusive other than the divisive structure that has exclusive character inherent in extant discourse.

Keywords

Contemporary Africa; Dialogue; Ethnicity; Conflicts; Trans-national Identity

References

• AWA, (1996), Emancipation of Africa Lagos: Emancipation Consultants and Publishers.
• BEST, S. and KELLNER, D. (1991), Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogation. New York: The Guilford Press.
• EBIJUWA, T. (2000), “Ethnic Conflict, Social Dislocation and the Search for a new order in Africa” Indian Journal of Politics 34, Nos 3-4, July – December.
• EBIJUWA, T. (2002), “Postmodernism and the conflict of values: The challenge of University Morality,” filosofia: International Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 31, No. 2, Manilla Philippines.
• EJIOFOR, L. (1981), Dynamics of Igbo Democracy, Ibadan: University Press Faces of Compassion – Selections, Wisdom Publications accessed 4 December 2013, http://www.wisdompubs.org/books/faces-compassion/selections.
• FRANCIS M. Deng, (2000) “Reading out: A Dinka Principle of Conflict Management” in Traditional cures for Modern Conflicts: African Conflict “Medicine”, ed. I. William Zartman (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, P96.
• FRED-MENSHA, B. K. (2000), “Bases of Traditional Conflict Management Among the Buems of the Ghana-Togo Border”, in Zartman, W. I. (ed.), Traditional Cures for Modern Medicine Boulder London: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
• FREIRE, P. (1970), Pedagogy of the Oppressed, London: Penguin Books.
• HABERMAS, J. (1987), The Theory of Communicative Action, Boston: Beacon Press.
• HARRIS, C. (1996), Reclaiming Truth: Contribution to a critique of Cultural Relativism, Durham: Duke University Press.
• LYOTARD, J. F. (1987), The Postmodern Condition: In After Philosophy End or Transformation Baynes, K. et al, Cambridge: MIT Press.
• MANUSHKANI, R. (2002), “Wisdom in a Postmodern Age,” filosofia: International Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 31, No. 2, Manilla Philippines’.
• MAZRUI, A. (1990), “Toward shared Images,” In his A World Federation of Cultures. An African perspective New York: The Free Press.
• NWALA, T. U. (1985), Igbo Philosophy, Literamed Publications Limited.
• NZONGOLO-NTALAJA, (1984), The Crisis in Zaire, London: Institute for African Alternatives.
• OLADİPO, O. (1998), “Modernization and the search for Community in Africa. Crisis and Conditions for change,” in Oladipo, O. (ed), Remaking Africa: Challenges of the twenty-first century. Ibadan: Hope Publications.
• RESCHER, N. (1996), Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• SILSS, E. (1986), “Consensus,” in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 13, New York: The Macmillan and the Free Press.
• UROH, C. (1998), “Beyond Ethnicity: The crisis of Regime Legitimation in Africa,” in Remaking Africa: Challenges of the twenty-first century, Oladipo, O. (ed.) Ibadan: Hope Publications.
• WIREDU, K. (1995), “Democracy and Consensus in African Traditional Politics: A plea for a one party Polity,” in K. Wiredu’s Conceptual Decolonization in African philosophy, Ibadan: Hope Publications.