Multi-stakeholders Platforms for Peace Building

Multi-stakeholder Platforms for Peace building are partnerships that support and enable socio-economic development programs to improve the standard of living for communities in the Niger Delta. These platforms empower communities to achieve a peaceful and enabling environment for equitable economic growth in the Niger Delta. These platforms include:

 

Partners for Peace (P4P)

P4P is a coordination platform for a wide range of peacebuilding initiatives. It was designed to build capacity, social capital, and local ownership among key stakeholder groups in the Niger Delta through the facilitation of a platform by which men, women, and youth can work together to promote peace in their communities. P4P facilitates grassroots conflict analyses and early warning, identifies and supports existing initiatives, and creates new initiatives that address the conflict risk factors.

Learn more about P4P here.

 

Shun Wahala

Elections in Nigeria, especially in the coastal states of the Niger Delta region, are often characterised by violence and electoral malpractices. Between July and December 2013, insecurity spiked in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria especially in Rivers, Bayelsa, Edo and Delta States; as the 2015 general elections approached, the stage was progressively being set for another sequence of violence.

In spite of the efforts of those working in the region to track insecurity and incidences of violence in the region, there were very few interventions designed to reduce incidences of violence in the 2015 elections in general and with a focus on youth in particular. This was particularly relevant given the number of restive youth in the region that had in the past made themselves available for election-related violence. To address this gap, PIND through its Non-Violent Election Project established the Shun Wahala platform to network with Nigerians to build grassroots support and synergy against violence in the 2015 elections. Pre and post elections updates and updates on all activities carried out under the Non-Violent Election project were published on the platform.

Learn more about this platform here.

 

Community Stakeholders Networks (CSN)

With the 2015 elections fast approaching and with the rate of election violence in the Niger Delta region fast increasing, PIND through its Non-Violent Election Project organised Community Stakeholders Networks (CSN) in all the LGAs in Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers States. The CSNs which comprised traditional councils, religious leaders, women groups, opinion leaders, youth groups, (especially the ex-militants), representatives of the Nigeria Police and State Security Service, and Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) focused on constructive engagement of key actors involved in insecurity and election violence. These actors include political parties at the state, local government and ward level, INEC, security operatives (Police, DSS, NSCDC) politicians, militants, youths, traditional rulers, ethnic warlords, etc.

CSN members were trained in advocacy, impact of electoral violence on livelihoods, conflict mitigation and mediation, early warning systems, and then deployed as peace champions, dissuading their peers from getting involved in political thuggery. Prior to the national election, activities included voter education and sensitization, town hall meetings, weekly peace celebrations, mobilization of youth and women, advocacy visits to key figures in the LGA and state (e.g. INEC, ethnic warlords and militia, political parties, security operatives, and youth bodies like IYC, NYCN, etc.) and intensive informational campaigns. During the political campaigns and the actual voting period, as data was collected in real-time through SMS and social media on risk factors and conflict escalation, the CSN served as an on-call resource for rapid response conflict mitigation.

Read more about the CSN here

 

PREVENT Teams

The PREVENT teams are platforms targeted at peace building and creating an enabling environment for economic development in the Niger Delta region. These teams were established to increase the engagement of grassroots peace-building actors in addressing local conflicts in the region.

The PREVENT teams were drawn from local peace-building actors that are active in the various chapters of the P4P network. These local actors were trained in Conflict Analysis, Advocacy, Negotiation, and Mediation and given the primary responsibility of addressing local level conflicts as it occurred within their milieu. As a response unit within the broader P4P early warning architecture, the PREVENT teams were tasked with identifying conflicts that could escalate into violence and working towards preventing or mitigating it as the case may be.

These teams have been making a lot of impact in their various states and have helped in averting socio-political crisis that would have most certainly led to the loss of human lives and perhaps economic livelihood. Read more about their impact here.