Mobilization & Empowerment Of Local Peace Actors – Partners for Peace (P4P)

What is P4P?

Our Partners for Peace (P4P) project is a platform in the Niger delta where people with different backgrounds and perspectives can come together to understand and address the root causes of conflict and build peace. Through P4P, we seek to build social capital around peace-building and promote peace in the Niger Delta using three main components:

• Voices – This component seeks to amplify the voices of positive actors and agents of peace in the society. It also serves as a catalyst to broaden and deepen the P4P Network.
• Network – This component is all about establishing a network of stakeholders from civil societies, community-based organizations, non-governmental organizations, private companies, donor organizations and the general public committed to promoting peaceable livelihoods in the Niger Delta.
• Action – As a Network of self-identified agents of peace is being established across the Niger Delta, this Network can then be leveraged by the Action component through small grants, training, and facilitation. Like the other two components, this one will be accelerated as development partners working in the region facilitate development grants. Click here for more information.

Why P4P?

Too often, the loudest voices heard in the public sphere are the belligerent voices and not the peaceful ones. PIND decided to address this situation by creating a platform that will enhance the voices of peace agents and ensure that they are heard in the public sphere loud and clear. To achieve this, we designed an inclusive Network that encourages and values proactive action, volunteerism and team spirit with the following key objectives -:

• To promote peace in the Niger Delta.
• To address the root causes of conflict and build peace.
• To facilitate  conflict  analysis  and  early  warning,  then  identify  existing  initiatives, especially local efforts, that address the salient conflict risk factors and promotes those initiatives.
• To support and enable socio-economic development programs to improve the standard of living for communities in the Niger Delta

Our P4P Network is part of PIND’s larger goal of establishing innovative and dynamic multi-stakeholder partnerships that support and enable socio-economic development programs to improve the standard of living for communities in the Niger Delta. Its focus areas are:

• Peace-building capacity development
• Advocacy Programme on peace building
• Conflict analysis and mitigation
• Economic Development Program

P4P’s structure

The P4P Network was launched in August 2013 in Port Harcourt, Rivers state. We threw its membership open to individuals and organizations with a commitment to peace and development in the Niger Delta region. To facilitate interventions targeted at peace building and ensure effective collaboration in the region, we created P4P chapters across the nine Niger Delta states of Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Imo, Ondo and Rivers.

The Network is governed by a Board of Trustees (BoT), a Central Working Committee (CWC) and State chapters. The BoT provides fiduciary and strategic oversight of the Network while the CWC facilitates, coordinates, and shapes the strategic direction of the Network. The State chapters, on the other hand, facilitate interventions targeted at peace building to create an enabling environment for economic development.

Two years after the launch, some state chapters set up sub-chapters and clubs within their state through their own bylaws approved by the Central Working Committee.

What is P4P’s work?

P4P recognizes and addresses the root drivers of conflict through:

• Conflict analysis and early-warning.
• Identifying existing initiatives to resolve conflict.
• Employing local efforts; that address the salient conflict risk factors.
• Promotion of conflict resolution initiatives.
• Establishing innovative and dynamic multi-stakeholder partnerships that support socio-development programs in communities in the Niger Delta.

Since 2012, P4P has been using short films to recognize and celebrate the peace building initiatives and conflict resolution efforts of local individuals, businesses, organizations, and communities from Delta, Bayelsa, and Rivers States who have experienced the direct and indirect effects of violent conflict and have chosen to respond constructively with innovation and resilience.  These films underscore the impact of conflict and peace on livelihoods in communities across the region. View the films here

P4P also developed a peace map as a tool for integrating and visualizing data on conflict and peace. This interactive map compiles the shared knowledge of the wider peace-building community on the holistic patterns of conflict risk and the locations of peace-building actors working to address those risk factors. Click here to view.

Key Achievements

• Network of peace agents has grown!

Now there are 62 sub-chapters with over 3,851 registered members comprising of individuals, associates and organisational members across the Niger-Delta states. They have established 92 partnerships with government agencies, private organisations, NGOs, CBOs P4P and successfully built a highly interactive website where individuals across all the key stakeholder groups in the Niger Delta can exchange information and collaborate on peace building initiatives. The ability of the Network to act independent of PIND is a remarkable achievement for us.

 “The achievements of this Network in less than three years are nothing short of extraordinary”.

Patricia Taft, Fund for Peace (FFP) Program Manager

• P4P governed independent of PIND

In 2014 and April 2016,  P4P’s Central Working Committee (CWC), independent of PIND, successfully planned and hosted an Annual General Meeting (AGM) to bring together representatives of state chapters to share success stories, challenges and experiences of the past year and collective responsibility for the coming year. This they achieved themselves with little oversight from the PIND Facilitation Team. The 2016 AGM was a milestone in the process of ownership of the P4P Network by the network people themselves and we recorded a remarkable attendance of 86 people of which 26 were females.

• P4P PREVENT teams are mitigating conflict

Our P4P state chapters are making impact in their various states by facilitating interventions targeted at peace building and creating an enabling environment for economic development. In 2015, P4P established PREVENT teams in the 9 Chapters of the P4P Network drawn from local peace-building actors that are active in the various chapters of the network. We trained these local actors in Conflict Analysis, Advocacy, Negotiation, and Mediation over a period of 4 days in their respective states and gave them the primary responsibility of identifying local conflicts that could escalate into violence and working towards preventing it or mitigating it as the case may be.

Within 5 months of their establishment, we have recorded a lot of success stories from these teams. For instance, the Akwa Ibom State PREVENT team intervened in an assassination attempt on a leading candidate before the last re-run election of the State House of Assembly in Oron/ Udung Uko LGAs. This intervention contributed to a peaceful local re-run election and helped in averting socio-political crisis that would have most certainly led to loss of human lives and perhaps economic livelihood.

“Through the P4P network, the conflict between the Fulanis and young farmers at Ore was successfully brought to an end”.

Ondo State Chapter Chairman

“After the destruction of Agro business at Ore, Odigbo LGA Ondo State by Fulani herdsmen, P4P in collaboration with Wealth Creation Agency (WECA) successfully restored peace to the area via a peaceful mediation with the Fulani herdsmen”.

Click here for more success stories and testimonials