Cultural Concept of Time and Peacebuilding in Yorubaland

Understanding and orientation of time is critical to action and productivity of human existence. It determines development and influences relationships. There are different concepts of time in human societies which some are linear concept of time, cyclical concept of time, event concept of time, and clock concept of time. Peaceful living is a desire of every human society, specifically the Yoruba. The Yoruba concept of time is both cyclical and event; this has great impact on their concept of peacebuilding. The cyclical and event concepts of time allow for procrastination, laziness, and total abandonment of responsibilities. When people are to arise and work for peacebuilding, the conception that if it is not done now, another time will come for it to be done, leaves the responsibility un-achieved. Scholars have written about time and peace separately but to the best knowledge of this paper no study has considered concept of time and peace building specifically in Yoruba. This study therefore, using desk research by consulting plethora of sources both hard and soft copies discovered that the Yoruba concept of time has made peacebuilding not at the level it ought to be. The study recommends that the Yoruba be educated to know that when time passes it cannot be regained. Therefore, whatever is to be done at a time especially building peace, should be done without procrastination.