ABSTRACT:

The paper examines the nature of conflict and peace building process in Esanland.It is argued that the various polities in pre-colonial Esan were able to use various entrenched local modalities to keep the peace in an event of conflict the area. Moreover, the study shows that although the area did featured large state political system borrowed from Benin kingdom and other places, the various Esan polities remained largely autonomous, they were by no means isolated from one another. On the contrary, they evolved harmonious living through different forms and levels of peacekeeping in times of conflict which created room for unity and cooperation. Furthermore, although conflicts occurred from time to time among them, such conflict were mostly minimal in scale and easily managed due to several peace mechanism built around their cosmology. It is concluded that in order to curb the festering conflicts in contemporary Nigeria, there is need to look inward to tap into traditional methods of conflict resolution.