CONCLUSION
The study examined the Nigeria Civil War (1967-1970) through the interventions of the O.A.U towards finding lasting solutions to the conflict. It looked at the prelude to the war as an African affair through the Aburi Accord. The study also identified some of the summits, conferences and peace talks organized under the platform of O.A.U to resolve the conflict. From the previous discussions, it is clear that the O.A.U played an important role in securing a lasting peace between the two warring factions. The study earlier revealed scholars submission on what has been termed ‘ineffective performance’, ‘failure’, or ‘impotence’ of the O.A.U in dealing with the challenges arising from internal conflicts in Africa. The present study argues that the O.A.U’s role in Nigeria’s civil war and other internal conflicts arising especially during the 1960s and 1970s have been hindered by several stumbling blocks. However, the O.A.U should be credited for the interventions made towards ensuring peace in African affair.
From the nature of the Nigeria-Civil War, it has been described as an “internal conflict,” and this in turn barricade the nature of intervention which could be employed by the organisation towards achieving peace. The most immediate challenge of the O.A.U’s intervention in internal affairs of African states is the Charter itself, specifically the so-called domestic jurisdiction clause. According to the logic of this argument, Article III (2), with the supportive III (3), prescribed “non-interference in the internal affairs of states” and “respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each state and its inalienable right to independent existence.”
The complexities of Nigeria’s Civil War and the nature of the O.A.U intervention is another major obstacle. Oyeweso observes that the O.A.U has engaged the use of mediation more than arbitration and conciliation. However, the civil war involves a multiplicity of actors including western powers such as France, Britain, Israel, and Portugal among others. Since the process of mediation involves several parties, the O.A.U employs only diplomatic methods. The success of diplomatic processes includes the prestige of the actors, the morality and the logical consistency of the arguments made. The success of diplomatic mediation also depends on the disputants for the outcome of the efforts. Since the O.A.U is not equipped to impose a settlement or judicial precedents, the question of its success or failure was up to the disputants themselves. Thus, the response of the disputants towards the O.A.U’s initiatives becomes a very important determinant of its effectiveness or ineffectiveness in a given situation. This exactly describes the involvement of the O.A.U in the Nigeria-Biafra conflict. The role of external western states also contributed to the nature of the conflict. It will be farfetched from historical objectivity to describe the intervention of the O.A.U in the Nigeria Civil War as a failure. Given the obvious fact, the organization was not established to prevent conflict or future wars like the United Nations. Amoo argues in a similar perspective that the O.A.U was not “a collective security body”52 neither its Charter nor practices portrayed it as a security organization.
The O.A.U was an intergovernmental organization whose essential task has been to encourage, coordinate, and harmonize voluntary cooperation and compliance among its members. Despite the establishment of the protocol on mediation, conciliation, and arbitration, the organization lacks the capacity, structure, and institutions to drive peace and security goals. The O.A.U does not appear to deal strictly with security matters but rather on “anticipation and prevention of conflicts”, after which it undertake peace-making and peace-building functions where conflicts had broken out. The ineffective performance and impotence thesis does not hold water considering the birth of the organization and the roles it played without any biases for abrupt success. The establishment of a Consultative Committee and the effort to bring Gowon and Ojukwu to discuss the way forward through several summits and peace talks are bold steps. However, the study agrees with the submission of Munya and Ashafa that one prime success of O.A.U in the Nigeria Civil War was the non-recognition of secessionism which in turn doomed Biafra in the eyes of the international community and guaranteed Nigeria’s unity.
