Community mediation practitioners in Nigeria are showing that early intervention can stop conflict before it escalates to large-scale violence.
Felicia Ilujunka of Lokoja, Nigeria, in Kogi State knows this well. She is quick to smile, but as a teacher for 35 years, she’s known for her contempt for bad behavior. Affectionately known as “big mummy” and “lady evangelist” in her Oworo community, she learned that she was gifted at mediating disputes.
Ilujunka intervened when a young man from the Ebira tribe stabbed a man from the Igala ethnic group. As people gathered and demanded that Ebira people be expelled from the community, Ilujunka convened a meeting of the two men’s parents. Soon, the dispute had been resolved, and the case was withdrawn from police involvement.
“By settling the situation on their own, Felicia helped both families avoid a long and costly process while landing on a sensible and fair outcome that quelled rising tensions in the community,” Oluwadamilola Anike Aina, communications officer for Mercy Corps Nigeria, wrote.
Lokoja is the capital of Kogi State, Nigeria, where the Niger and Benue rivers meet. It is home to several ethnic groups. Like in other parts of Africa, ethnic clashes are frequent drivers of local disputes.
Farmer-herder squabbles and competition for water and other resources are common across Africa and can lead to violence. Perceptions of lax governmental service and the absence of formal security personnel can worsen these conflicts. Even when security authorities do respond, their actions seldom address underlying triggers and can “validate the grievance-based narratives of spoilers and exacerbate the problem by feeding the perception that security actors are supporting one side over another,” Ifeoluwa Olawole, Tog Gang, and Maurice Amollo of global nonprofit humanitarian organization Mercy Corps wrote for the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.
“Crucially, most flashpoints begin as community-level disputes, then escalate when no credible or fair venues exist to resolve them,” they wrote.
A process called interest-based mediation and negotiation (IBMN) helps local leaders address disputes in a way that seeks out common interests among the parties at odds. The process typically trains 25 to 35 people for up to 40 hours across two to five days. Olawole, Gang and Amollo report that the process has been applied to initiatives in Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria and Uganda.
For example, the Community Initiatives to Promote Peace program in Nigeria, in which Ilujunka participated, used the IBMN curriculum and follow-up mentoring sessions. A year of training and mentoring for 340 community leaders costs about $60,000. The five-year program, which started in 2019, has resolved more than 1,900 disputes, increased knowledge of mediation and reduced distrust, according to report authors.
A program for the Kotido-Kaabong-Turkana West corridor in northern Kenya and Uganda trained 543 local leaders and addressed farmer-herder disputes over grazing, water resources, migration and land ownership. Engagements led to resource-sharing agreements and actions to support pastoralists, among other things. The annual cost was $50,000, the report states.
Engaging young people is a crucial part of the mediation landscape. The African continent is in the midst of a youth population boom, sometimes called a “youth bulge.” According to the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, a majority of Africa’s nearly 1.6 billion people are between 15 and 35. By 2050, African young people will constitute more than a third of the world’s young people.
Engaging young people helps build resilience against violence and recruitment by terrorists and insurgents. Mercy Corps tells of Kelvin Chikpi Benson, a young Nigerian man who served as secretary of his local peace committee in the Uchen farming community of Makurdi, Benue State. When young people there pushed community elders for more power and leadership, Benson explained that the elders had come to lead through succession, not force. He explained that the younger generation would have their turn in leadership in due time.
“The elders also promised that if they calm their tempers, power will be given to them based on merit,” Benson told Mercy Corps. “Since then, the situation with the youths has calmed down.”
These mediation techniques are not meant to replace traditional law enforcement and security agencies, but they can offer an effective complement, the report states. The following actions are examples of how to effectively scale up such programs, Olawole, Gang and Amollo wrote:
“Community-based mediation works because it changes perceptions of conflict drivers at the level they ignite,” according to the Africa Center report. “By creating fair, accessible venues to resolve resource and service grievances, community mediation mechanisms rebuild trust in authorities and strengthen civic collective action.”
