The Yorùbá’s Peacefulness Enhanced by Informal Peace Education  

This paper is a review of the southwest Nigerian Yorùbá and their recognized peacefulness in the context of Nigeria as a country. It attempts to address the peacefulness amidst the Nigeria unstable circumstances and in comparison, with the established peaceful societies (PS). The first part of the paper provides a concise discussion about peace and conflict studies as it developed in the West followed by an outline of conflicts in Nigeria and amongst the Yorùbá to identify a gap for this inquiry. The paper suggests the Yorùbá multireligious community provides some clues to how peacefulness could be retained in a society. Similarly, it suggests the roles informal peace education play in supporting people of different beliefs but same culture to retain their harmony. The author, nevertheless, left a challenge to move the study of PS beyond the agrarian and rural communities to investigate more modern societies for peacefulness. NOTE : This article is taken from part of chapter 2 and the conclusion of the author’s doctoral thesis, with a few amendments.