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IDENTITY
If you meet a stranger for the first time and asked who they were, the response you most 
likely wished to elicit was their nationality, ethnicity, religious persuasion, and probably social 
class, political affiliation, and sexual orientation. Ojukwu and Onifade (2010) conceptualize 
identity as any group attribute that provides recognition or definition, reference affinity, coherence 
and meaning for individual members of the group. For Okpanachi (2010), identity is the progress 
of construction of meaning on the basis of cultural attributes, which is given priority over other 
sources of meaning. According to Erikson (1968), it is an individual's sense of belonging to a group 
if such belongingness influences his political behaviour. Identities are sources of meaning for 
themselves, and by themselves, constructed through a process of individuation (Giddens, 1991). 

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Following the various perspectives above, we may conceptualize identity as a value-based 
attribute by which an individual or a group is recognized and which sets them apart from other 
individuals or groups.
CONFLICT 
Different scholars have defined conflict in different ways. Conflict has been defined as the 
existence of non-compatibility or disagreements between two actors (individuals, groups, 
organizations or nations) in their interaction over the issues of interests, values, beliefs, emotions, 
goals, space, positions, scarce resources, etc. Fink defines conflict as any "situation or processes 
in which two or more social entities are linked by at least one form of antagonistic psychological 
relation or at least one form of antagonistic interaction" (Fink, 1968:456). 
The psychological antagonisms are such things as incompatible goals, mutually exclusive 
interests, emotional hostility, factual or value dissensions and traditional enmities; while 
antagonistic interactions range from the most direct, violent and unregulated struggle to the most 
subtle, indirect and highly regulated forms of mutual interference (Fink, 1968). On his part, Coser, 
cited in Alli (2006), avers that conflict occurs when two or more persons engage in a struggle over 
values and claims in order to secure status, power and resources; a struggle in which the objectives 
of the opponents are to neutralize, injure or eliminate their rivals. 
Thus, conflict is a special kind of social interaction process or interactive relationship 
between parties who have mutually exclusive or incompatible values, a struggle between opposing 
forces; a battle, an opposition between ideas, interests, etc. It is an opposition between two 
simultaneous but incompatible wishes or impulses, sometimes leading to emotional tension. It 
could also mean to come into opposition, clash or to fight.