Indigenous Communication, Culture, and Traditional Institutions for Intra-Party Conflicts Resolution: A Study of Nigeria’s Two Major Political Parties

Unresolved conflicts within Nigeria’s political parties deter the progress of African’s most populous country. Devastating impacts of intra-party disputes go beyond political instabilities, dislodgments and the pervasive poverty. Resultant widespread denigration of Nigerians and the negative social developments are causes for concern. Nigerians, significant representative of the world’s black population, one in every five black persons globally, are hindered from landmark contributions to human advancements by disruptive conflicts. Unending clash of incompatible interests among members of political parties, the platforms for national transformation, stultify efforts to develop Nigeria and its human capacities. This study explores and prescribes use of African cultural tools, indigenous communication and traditional institutions, the neglected alternatives, as effective panacea for conflicts resolution. It uses Nigeria’s two major political parties, All Progressives Congress, APC, and Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP, for the exposition.It is a qualitatively dominant mixed-method research with data set from key informant interviews, a focus group discussion and questionnaire survey. It deploys social control, development communication and intangible heritage theories to synchronize findings from relationships among identified variables in the quantitative data with thematic analyses of qualitative data. Hermeneutic phenomenological interpretations are used to draw sound and credible conclusions. Results show party members, mainly leaders, shun compliance to resolutions. Many recycle conflicts as commercial products and weaponise disputes for domination. Original contribution to knowledge is prescription of active oaths to seal conflicts resolution treaties. This is to make the agreements binding and enforceable with catastrophic consequences for breaches and renegade acts on all involved persons.