EXPLORING COMMllNITY-BASED COUNSELLING APPROACHES IN COMBATING COMMUNAL CONFLICTS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The recurrence of communal conflict in Nigeria has remained one of the serious problems confronting national integration and sustainable development. Hence, it must be stamped out. It is against this background that this paper argued that everybody including Nigerian adult educators and counselors must contribute to the restoration of peace in our communities. The paper therefore, examined incidents of communal conflict and factors responsible for it in Nigeria. The paper concludes that through exploration of community-based counselling approaches such as empowerment of local communities, socioeconomic recovery, community-based environmental forum, community dialogue initiative, traditional justice and reconciliation, community-based security forum and community-based counselling mediation team, tolerance education, communal conflict can be combated. The paper recommends among others that counsellors and adult educators should popularize community-based counselling approaches in conflict management among Nigerian communities with the view for communities to explore them in resolving conflicts.