THE ROLE OF CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION IN PROMOTING PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Nigeria's enduring diversity of ethnicity, language, and religion has over the decades, become both a source of national richness and a recurring trigger of conflict, mistrust, and violence among its component groups. This article examined the role that citizenship education, understood broadly to include Social Studies, Civic Education, and tertiary-level General Studies courses such as Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution, plays in cultivating the values, knowledge, and skills that underpin peaceful coexistence in a plural society. Drawing on recent scholarship in Nigerian education and social science journals, the article argues that citizenship education, when properly conceived and delivered, builds national consciousness, tolerance, and conflict-resolution competence among learners, thereby weakening the ethnic and religious fault lines that have repeatedly been exploited to produce communal violence. The article also identifies persistent implementation gaps, including weak curriculum emphasis, inadequate funding, a shortage of specialist teachers, and assessment practices that reward memorisation over attitude change, which continue to limit the impact of citizenship education on peacebuilding. It concludes with recommendations for strengthening the discipline as a genuine instrument of peaceful coexistence in Nigeria.