Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Conflict Resolution in Southeast Nigerian Communities: An Ethnographic Inquiry

This study conducts an original ethnographic inquiry into indigenous knowledge systems as resources for conflict resolution in Southeast Nigerian communities, focusing on Igbo-speaking communities in Anambra, Enugu, and Ebonyi states. The systematic marginalisation of indigenous conflict resolution knowledge in the dominant Western-oriented conflict studies literature represents both a theoretical gap and a practical loss, as living indigenous conflict resolution systems in Nigerian communities offer rich, contextually embedded wisdom that remains largely undocumented in scholarly form. Employing a prolonged engagement ethnographic methodology, data were generated through eighteen months of immersive community research combining participant observation, oral history recordings, structured traditional dispute resolution session observations, and narrative interviews with 80 indigenous knowledge holders, including dibia practitioners, umunna elders, title holders, and women's guild leaders. The theoretical contribution is an original Igbo Conflict Resolution Epistemology, which documents and systemically analyses the cosmological, relational, and restorative principles underlying traditional conflict resolution in Southeast Nigeria. Findings reveal a sophisticated indigenous system integrating spiritual sanction, community witnessing, graduated escalation processes, and restorative agreement forms that converge with contemporary restorative justice principles in important ways, while also exhibiting distinct epistemological foundations. Recommendations include integrating documented indigenous conflict resolution principles into Nigerian conflict studies curricula, developing community-based indigenous conflict resolution capacity building programs, and advocating for the formal recognition of validated indigenous dispute resolution processes within Nigeria's legal pluralism framework. Keywords: indigenous knowledge, conflict resolution, Igbo, Southeast Nigeria, ethnography.