The Causes and Forms of Conflict

The word “conflict” comes from the Latin “confligere”, the literal translation of which is “to bend together” or to “to tense”1. Conflicts are unavoidable and usually an interpersonal relations but it is necessary to know how to resolve it either in our day to day activities, business, state, country or nation state. Conflict is a contest, competition, dispute and tensions as well as manifest clashes between social forces. It’s the situation in which incompatible goals, attitudes, emotions, behaviours or resources lead to a disagreement or conflict between two or more individuals or nations. It often differs from person to person, group to group, cultural background to cultural background or between and among nations. Conflicts are also tensions

Also, developments embedded in the internal structures of one or more clashing countries often leads to conflict while a change in this structure might lead to the end of this conflicts or their recurrence. Territorial claims, ideology, colonialism, nationalism, religion and natural resources have been the main sources of conflict throughout the world while the causes of some of these is decreasing. Struggles for the control of valuable natural resources have remained a persistent feature of national and international affairs for decades. In addition to helping some of the most corrupt and oppressive regimes to remain in power, natural resources have been fuelling conflicts within and between African countries3. Such conflict situations typically take the form of territorial disputes over the possession of oil-laden border areas, factional struggles among the leaders of oil-rich countries, and major inter-state wars over the control of vital oil and mineral

It must be noted that Africa was largely controlled by indigenous people in the 1870s, but by 1914 it became almost wholly subdued and divided into colonies by the European powers, colonial boundaries in these formations were not established according to the various indigenous groupings. The grouping of nations together in some cases and dividing them in others was a common feature as long as it was consistent with the security and economic interests of the colonial powers. After independence, most Africa became and is still disturbed by the legacy of trying to get originally different indigenous groupings to live peacefully in a single country or to get the same ethnic group to live peacefully in different neighbouring countries. As in most of Africa, therefore, the origins of the conflict situation between Cameroon and Nigeria over border issues can be traced to the colonial era and some post-independence political activities. The dispute over Bakassi is a legacy of imperialist colonial rule and neo-colonial regimes in Africa, for selfish economic, political and strategic calculations, by imperialist capitalist powers such as Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, etc. The whole boundary dispute began when the Obong of Calabar signed a "Treaty of Protection" with Britain on September 10, 1884; Britain then agreed to extend its protection to the Obong and his Chiefs. The