Economic Cost of Violent Conflict in Nigerian Cities: Implications for Pro-poor Service Delivery

• Authors: Oluwatayo, Isaac B

Abstracts

EN

Violent conflict is more or less becoming a recurrent and unabated issue, especially in Nigerian cities. This hasbeen attributed to a number of factors ranging from ethnicity, religion, bad governance, corruption, poverty, aggressionand marginalization or inequality in wealth distribution and resource allocation across the different regions of the country,to mention just a few. The resultant effect of this is manifested in the wanton loss of lives and properties and the untold hardshipusually accompanying a conflict situation. The result presented relied on data collected from a sample of 350 respondents in Ibadanmetropolis. Descriptive analysis of the data showed that the average age of respondents was 45 years with more men participatingin violent conflict than women. The educational distribution of respondents showed that about 42.3 percent of those surveyedhad no formal education and only about 26. 8 percent were educated up to tertiary level. Distribution of respondents based onsocial/occupational affiliations showed that the students, marketers, National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), RoadTransport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) and Okada (motorcycle) riders are major players in violent conflict. However,analysis of costs associated with violent conflict revealed loss of man‑hour/man‑days,incapacitation, hospitalization, misallocationof resources, incessant reprimand, alienation and destruction of lives and properties as very prominent. The result of the probit modelemployed to ascertain some correlates of participation in violent conflict among respondents from different social/occupationalstrata in the study area revealed that age, gender, marital status, educational status, political inclination, family setting and levelof poverty play significant roles in determining their participation. Thus, young, men, single/divorced/widowed, those with noformal education, membership of the ruling political party, family setting and urban poor participated more in violent conflictthan the aged, women, married, those with tertiary education, membership of the opposition party and non‑poorurban residents.Therefore, efforts should be geared at building capacity of residents through education so as enhance their level of wellbeing. Incomere‑distributionin favour of the poor will assist checking participation in violent conflict.

Keywords

EN

Determinants; Economic Cost; pro‑poor growth; urban Nigeria; Violent Conflict

• Publisher: Wyższa Szkoła Policji w Szczytnie
• Journal: Internal Security
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 6(1)
• Pages: 129-144

Contributors

author

Oluwatayo, Isaac B

Identifiers

DOI

10.5604/20805268.1122420