Building peace in a divided state of Nigeria: The role of counselling in ensuring unity and national development in the country

Abstract

There are different crises in Nigeria ranging from ethnic-religious crisis to agitation for resource control/break-up of the country, but the religious crisis especially the recent Boko Haram insurgency has attracted international attention and concern. The fallouts of these crises are threatening the country’s unity and national development. Based on the foregoing, this paper examines the prospect of building peace in Nigeria as a divided state leveraging on the roles of counselling in ensuring unity and national development. The paper adopts a survey research method and the use of self-developed questionnaire for data collection. The finding shows that Nigerians have strong confidence in the efficacy of counselling in solving personal problems and that counselling could ensure National unity and development in Nigeria. Thus, to build a united Nigeria, the paper recommends that counselling clinics should be established across the country for students and politicians and all other citizens of Nigeria. This policy recommendation should also be backed up with enabling law.

Keywords: Divided society, national identity, Nigeria, counselling.