Migration and Urban Violence in Nigeria: Imperative of Peace Culture

The phenomenon of violence arising from migratory characteristic of urbanisation has invariably constituted an integral dimension of intrastate conflicts in various parts of post-colonial Nigeria. Despite the subsisting approaches for managing the crisis, the menace of urban violence has continued to manifest in varying dimensions with the concomitant implications for societal peace, and security. Employing qualitative method of data collection, this study analysed the nexus between migration and urban violence within the context of the imperative of peace culture as a constructive management instrument. Findings revealed that urban centres have remained the hub of inter-group violence because they are an agglomeration of peoples from diverse cultural, ethnic, linguistic and historical backgrounds. Given the inevitability of migration in all spheres of urban life, the study contended that peace culture has the prospect for managing differences without being indifferent, and responding to inter-group conflicts nonviolently through shared values of mutual identity, equity, unity of purpose and dialogue. Peace education should as a matter of education policy, be adopted as a channel for inculcating peace culture and ideals of nonviolence in the citizenry, thereby discouraging arbitrary inter-ethnic acrimony, ethno-religious rivalries and socio-political entanglement that have always exacerbated the culture of violence in urban centres.