Paper long abstract:

Africa would continue to face dilemmas of protracted inter-ethnic contestations and the challenge of nation-building for its paucity of effective conflict transformative strategies required for achieving sustainable peace and stability. This projection is informed by the ease of transition from one severe crisis to the other in the continent which brings to sharp focus the fragility, incompetent character, and the ineptitude of post-colonial states in Africa to amicably manage internal conflicts to achieve peace. Vulnerability to conflicts arising from their fragility is as a result of the illogical colonial partitioning and architecturing, which arbitrarily amalgamated the varied ethnic nationalities into one political unit devoid of the desired naturally-induced inter-identity harmonious relations. Consequently, the ensued multi-cultural and multi-linguistic backgrounds of the states have become very hard to manage and be converted to national integration and unity, and thereby constantly generate inter-ethno-religious hostilities. The incessant inter-ethnic hostilities and the adverse impact on regional peace, security, stability and sustainable development have ignited the idea of reversing the colonial partitioning and adopting de-partitioning of the hitherto multi-ethnic African states as an alternative conflict management strategy for achieving peace. The central theoretical debate and problematiques that confront this study therefore are that: How far can the revisionist de-partitioning thesis help resolve the historical and protracted inter-ethnic divisions in Africa? Is returning Africa to the pre-colonial geo-political status quo ante entirely feasible and viable? What is the implication of such proposition in international law and the contemporary globalized world?