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SUMMARY
CAN have a major impact on inter-religious and communal conflicts. The Nigerian state cannot survive without trust and religious tolerance. Religions play a major role, as parties in violent conflicts, as passive bystanders, and as active peace-makers and peacebuilders. Religions have a major responsibility in creating a constructive conflict culture. They will have to end conflicts fuelled by religion, stop being passive bystanders, and organise themselves to provide more effective peace services. Religions and religious organisations have an untapped and underused integrative power potential. To assess this potential and to understand which factors enhance or inhibit joint peace ventures between the Muslims and Christian religions is an urgent research challenge.
The role of faith-based organizations like CAN in helping to resolve conflicts and build peace is a crucial component in helping to achieve human development more generally. This is relevant especially in a Nigerian polity where it is believed that Nigerians are highly religious and in fact see themselves first and principally as Christians or Muslims before identifying themselves as Nigerians. This is seen in the way the Christians for instance throng the Redemption Camp in millions during the monthly meetings of the largest church in the world, The Redeemed Christian Church of God. This is a pointer to the fact that in Nigeria, religious actors are well-respected in certain situations than political leaders. Therefore, when channelled along the right lines and maximized, religious actors and faith-based organizations like CAN can help create progress in conflict resolution efforts in Nigeria. However, CAN has a lot to do if it must play this pivotal role in Nigeria. At the moment, CAN’s conflict resolution efforts are not robust enough.
