The Role of Oral Narratives in Building Peace in Nigeria

Abstract

Contemporary knowledge forms leans towards an integration of cultural forms of knowing that supports development initiatives. 21st century scholarly insights reveal that the mitigation of conflict can be conditioned on culture specific oral traditions that manifest in various arts forms found in spoken, signs and symbolic art genres existent in Nigeria. This paper examines the role of Nigeria’s oral narrative can play in building blocks of peaceful co-existence. It argues that art forms of oral narrative are viable agents of creating enduring peaceful currency in a country apparently filled with incessant ethno-religious and socio-economic and political informed conflicts. Identifiable prescriptive and descriptive forms of oral narrative that support peace building initiatives are the story telling and proverb dimension of Nigeria’s rich cultural diversity. It interrogates the socio-cultural norms of oral narrative cadences in intersectional colorations amongst the three major ethnic tribes in Nigeria. The paper finds that these norms can reinvigorate peaceful living through storytelling and proverbs that attacks the counter narratives that breeds violence. The paper observes that oral narrative can create alternative paradigms capable of decolonizing doctored imperial languages and cultural knowledge forms over the orient ways of ‘Knowing and Doing’. Therefore, oral narratives encapsulated in culture specific storytelling and proverbial ingenuity can be adequately employed as alternative strategies for conflict resolution and peace building in Nigeria. It concludes that these catalogues of oral tradition defining acceptable and peaceful agents of mutual respect for socially admissible norms, can reinforce patterns of sustainable peace building paradigms in Nigeria. Recommended and observable consequences should seek out indigenous oral narratives over and above hegemonic colonial ideologies that misrepresent Nigeria unique multi-ethnic, and cultural heritage dynamics of conflict resolution and sustainable peace building.