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Communal Conflict and Violence: Causes and Impact

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Handbook of Anger, Aggression, and Violence

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Abstract

The prevalence of communal conflict has grossly hampered rural development in Nigeria and engendered endemic poverty of multidimensional proportions. It has also reversed the gains of several government interventions and consequently impoverished rural dwellers, causing spiralling volatility in the different geopolitical zones. The reality is that community conflict is on the rise, and its effect on development has been quite worrisome. The focus of this chapter is to analyze the nexus between communal conflict and rural development in Nigeria and specifically highlight the effect of communal conflict on education, health, and social infrastructure in rural Nigeria. Books, articles, tabloids, and periodicals were used as sources of data for this chapter, while content analysis was adopted in analyzing the data. On the strength of the qualitative data sourced, it has been discovered that communal conflict damages critical social amenities that result in serious development issues. Fundamentally, this chapter recommends that the land-owning clans must carefully ensure that land borders between clans are accurately established, delimited, and recorded as soon as possible. This is central, since communal conflicts in Nigeria are largely caused by land disputes.

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Abbreviations

IT:

Information Technology

PHC:

Primary Health Centre

UNDP:

United Nations Development Programme

US:

United States

WHO:

World Health Organizations

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Calabar, Calabar, Cross River, Nigeria

    John Thompson Okpa

  2. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu, Nigeria

    Benjamin Okorie Ajah & Obinna J. Eze

  3. Humanities Unit, School of General Studies, University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus, Nsukka, Nigeria

    Olisa Anthony Enweonwu

Authors
  1. John Thompson Okpa
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  2. Benjamin Okorie Ajah
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  3. Obinna J. Eze
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  4. Olisa Anthony Enweonwu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Benjamin Okorie Ajah .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Health and Wellbeing, University of Suffolk, Ipswich, UK

    Colin R. Martin

  2. Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, King’s College London, London, UK

    Victor R. Preedy

  3. School of Life Sciences, University of Westminster, London, UK

    Vinood B. Patel

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Okpa, J.T., Ajah, B.O., Eze, O.J., Enweonwu, O.A. (2023). Communal Conflict and Violence: Causes and Impact. In: Martin, C.R., Preedy, V.R., Patel, V.B. (eds) Handbook of Anger, Aggression, and Violence. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31547-3_184

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