Abstract

The thrust of the paper is to critically examine how the concept of social capital can be a useful tool in the building and advancement of peace, community trust, cooperation and access to justice in conflict-torn environments like Nigeria; that is, social capital to serve as a mechanism to mediate and/or moderate the inter and intra-communal conflicts and enhance the capacity of the Nigerian state to pursue and promote non-repressive and accommodative policies of inter-intra ethnic equity and reciprocity.

Key words: Conflicts, indigeneity, identity politics, citizenship, social capital.