Statement of Motivation

Part of my statement of motivation for a Conflict Resolution Course I applied for sometimes ago.

I am from a country of over 250 ethnic groups speaking close to 600 languages. I am from Nigeria, a diverse, multi-cultural, multi-lingual country with the largest population of humans in Sub-Saharan Africa.

With close to 150million highly-opinionated, energetic and concerned people, ideology constantly differs and, disagreements regularly happen. Indeed, we are a nation of men and women who are tolerant, loving and committed to one another. However, in the wake of leadership failures and resource mismanagement that have gripped the country for decades, selfish tendencies and aggressive demeanours have found their way into our national character and national life.

Our post-independence history is laced with numerous conflicts most of which led to loss of lives, properties and trust. Some of these conflicts had started as simple disagreements and in the absence of effective disagreement and conflict management tools and skills, had grown into unmanageable fracas, clashes and fallouts. The national character and identity of this promising country have constantly being threatened. We are in a situation where we are trying to cement broken trust and build comatose institutions all because we could not identify potential fail-out situations in time and/or we did not respond promptly to some of the ongoing conflicting concerns.

As a nation, we have lost time and potential years of development owing to civil wars, religious misunderstandings and political unrests. More than ever before, we now need regular and effective disagreement management interventions to keep our nascent democracy going. We need improved conflict resolution competence to channel us in the path of growth and development.

One of our key disagreement hotspots has being in the area of natural resource management and governance. Nigeria is a country rich in natural resources – land, water, agricultural and mineral resources. Apart from being one of the oil-rich countries in the world, our agriculture has also over the years performed well. We derive considerable proportion of our GDP from exporting agricultural products alongside oil and natural gas.

Unfortunately, instead of these resources being a blessing for us, they have served more as a curse. Nigeria today is a classic example of resource management failure essentially owing to conflicts that have fuelled mismanagement and crisis; the Niger Delta region being a noteworthy case.

I do not hope proffer solutions to all the resource management challenges and conflicts Nigeria have. I rather want to focus on the agricultural sector of the country and contribute my quota to improving this sector. My passion for change and my conviction to be involved was what influenced my taking up a Masters Degree study in Agricultural Science and Resource Management in the Tropics and Subtropics (ARTS) at the University of Bonn, Germany. As a contributor to change, it was imperative I understood the state-of-the art dynamics and nexus between resource management and development.

While on this conflict management course, i hope to learn strategies for conflict recognition and also acquire skills in intervention and mediation of conflicts. I am of the opinion that we might not all have the same thinking and ideas but we can all agree to pursue a common cause. I believe that we cannot rid the world of disagreements but we can envisage potential disagreement situations and deploy tools and skills to intervene in these disagreements before they grow out of proportion.

I am poised to share the knowledge, tools and competencies gained from this course with hundreds of other concerned, committed and progressive youths that i am in network with and i believe that together, we can help to improve conflict management capabilities of stakeholders in the Nigerian agricultural and natural resources management circle.

It is in this light that i apply for this course and wish for a favourable review and consideration of my application.