Journal of African Studies and Sustainable Development

Conflicts are ontological realities that are pragmatically essential to human endeavour; as such we cannot rule out its pragmatic value to human existence, most especially when it reveals a lacuna that should have been taken for granted unknown to the people. Hence, there are conflicts everywhere in our society; and such conflicts exist in the family, religious groupings, political groupings even our personal lives. This paper focuses on political conflicts which generates from ethnic, religious and other dimensions unavoidable due to the very fact that conflict is part of human existence in addressing issues of social injustices. What is more significant of these conflicts are the way and manner they are managed and resolved by those in the position to resolve them. Nigeria in recent years has so many conflicts that are characterized in many forms which have developed into all manner of vices due to failure of conflict management by the State. Adopting an expository and analytic approach, the paper shall examine Karl Popper?s Piecemeal Social Engineering (PSE) as a methodological approach to conflict prevention. The paper clearly addresses the problem of conflict management and interrogates the role of leaders as social engineers in conflict prevention.

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