Peace and
freedom walk together, and peace is, in the last analysis, basically a matter
of human rights” so says former United States President, John F. Kennedy, who
ironically paid the supreme price when he was assassinated before the expiration
of his tenure.
The
academic enterprise of doing this piece is aimed at uncovering the possibility
of constructing a philosophy of peace and also geared towards a critical
analysis of what man views or should view as the normal human condition. In
other words, my focus is to attempt a philosophical exposition of the
philo-ethical concepts of war and peace with the purpose of discovering what is
the normal human condition, between the above-mentioned human conditions,
namely war and peace.
The
investigative research is done against the backdrop of the obvious existential
reality of the situation of anarchy unleashed on the Nigerian space by a range
of freelance armed terrorists with operational and command bases in the North-
East of Nigeria.
Boko
Haram is the major terror group that has been threatening the peace of
Nigerians for nearly five years now. Writing about peace in a terror-prone nation
like Nigeria obviously has a nexus with what obtains in other climes similarly
threatened.
Without
mincing words, we must remind ourselves that humanity has spent the better part
of its existence on earth in unending warfare. The French revolution and the
Napoleonic wars in the nineteenth century, the first and second world wars, in
the early twentieth century, the Gulf war of our modern time and the many civil
wars currently going on or that took place in Yugoslavia (which stopped in
1995), Rwanda, Liberia, Somalia, Uganda, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Sri Lanka and
Cambodia, to mention just few, are clear attestations to the fact that humanity
has always been engaged in ceaseless battles.
The
terrorist attacks against Nigerian interests and people, which commenced fully
in the year 2009, have attracted global attention. On many occasions in recent
times, the United Nations Security Council and some world powers like France,
the United States, Germany and China, have shown interest in finding a lasting
solution of the spate of killings that have spiralled out of control and into
other neighbouring countries like Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
It is now
acceptable to humanity to see terrorism as a global threat, and not just a
particular area that they concentrate their command centres.
Some
concerned observers and monitors of violence have categorically predicted that
so long as man continues to harbour that ego-centric quest to actualize his
selfish wants at the expense of other people’s human and natural rights, ‘war’
will always be with us. This selfish human tendency may lead to a return to
anarchy, chaos and the state of nature which was described by philosophers as
periods of lawlessness.
Thomas
Hobbes, one of those finest philosophers that recorded the condition of
humanity during the period when members of the human race lived in the state
of nature correctly wrote that “it is manifest that during the time men live
without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition
which is called war, and such war as is of every man against every man.
For war
consisteth not in battle only or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time
wherein the ‘will’ to contend by battle is sufficiently known and therefore
the notion of time is to be considered in the nature of war, as it is in the
nature of weather. For as the nature of foul weather lieth not in a shower or
two of rain, but in an inclination thereto of many days together; so the nature
of war disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the
contrary. All other time is peace”.
Man seeks
peace and is sure to find it by his obedience to the laws and principles of
human rights, social justice and love. In the Nigerian context we can attain
peace but we must first of all defeat the overwhelming tendency to elevate travesty
of justice as a national ethos. Victims of terrorism in Nigeria deserve and
must be awarded justice in line with the constitution.
The
President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration must focus basically on the fundamentals
of achieving lasting resolution of these conflicts but there cannot be a
panacea to terrorists attacks if Justice isn’t delivered to the hundreds of
thousands of innocent Nigerians who have suffered one violent victimisation
or the other in the hands of terrorists of the Boko Haram specie. President
Buhari must do and say those things that will promote the best public interest
and deliver social justice to the victims.
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