Causes of War

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The term war is sometimes used as a synonyms for conflict. It is not uncommon to see people restricting the meaning of war to violent conflict involving armed forces. However like war, conflict is and has been throughout history a normal way of conducting disputes between political groups within human society. “Conflict is inevitable outcome of human diversity and a world without conflict is not desirable because it would mean a world without diversity.” David weeks said it best. Africa is unique in so many ways. This includes its diversity in ethnic, religious and socio-cultural terms. This diversity sometimes poses clashes and conflicts and sometimes unfortunately bloody. The diversity viewed as blessing unfortunately turns into a curse. West Africa is shaped by a complex regional dynamics. As a result, local disputes and national conflicts have spilled over national border. Each country in the continent has a complicated internal situation and a violence tendencies. Local enmity have been polarized and entangled with those neighboring countries.

The 1990s saw West Africa in a number of conflicts. Unfortunately, most forecasts predicts further increase. While most of West Africa has had its share of inter-state wars, the majority of its conflicts are internal. In most parts of the continent, the internal conflicts is unfortunately increasing. This is a result of the activities of religious militant in some part of the continent. The growth of ethno-religious bigotry in Nigeria has its foundation on the activities of the colonial masters. In 1861, the colonial lords annexed Lagos and continued to penetrate the Sokoto Caliphate. The colonial masters brought Christianity with them and gradually acculturated the ethnic groups that made up the present day country. They antagonized the religious doctrine on ground in the country. Hence, they presented African Traditional Religion as the act of idol worship, while at the same time imposing their Christian tenets on the Caliphate and other parts of what we know today as Nigeria using their strong gunboat

For example the religious strife between Christians-Muslims can be traced back since 1953 has gotten worse. Today religious violence in Nigeria is dominated by the Boko Haram insurgency which aims at imposing the Caliphate and Sharia laws in some parts of the country. According to the Council on Foreign Relations' Nigeria Security Tracker (NST), “there have been 785 sectarian related deaths in Plateau state alone between May 29, 2011 and June 30, 2013. Between January and June 2013, 481 people were killed; 61 percent of the total since May 2011. These estimates are very conservative”. Even though, most of these conflicts are political-religious motivated, the tragic thing is that, it is the civilian populations that bear the brunt of the casualties in such conflicts. It is estimated that, these conflict is at some 80-90 percent of the total casualties across the world. These wars do not only cause casualties and refugees but contribute vastly to the spread of diseases, starvation, malnutrition, social and economic decline and moral deterioration.