Although initiated by PIND in August 2013, the Partners for Peace (P4P) Network was always meant to be an independent body driven by the communities it is meant to serve. In 2016, PIND’s Peacebuilding team fostered P4P’s blossoming independence, providing support for 95 new and/or scaled-up interventions in peacebuilding and conflict resolution, resulting in a remarkable increase in conflicts being resolved by P4P Network members. Letting the Network take on a life of its own has been key to its growth; the Network has grown from 120 members at its start in 2013 to over 4,000 members from across all nine states of the Niger Delta region by 2016 because Network members have been allowed to truly own it by determining the shape of its intervention in their states, creating their own sub-chapters in some communities and even forming their own partnerships with relevant state actors.
The rise in Partners for Peace (P4P) membership from 3,578 at the end of September 2015 to 4,859 by end of third quarter 2016 is another success story of PIND’s partnership approach in facilitating a robust peacebuilding infrastructure. The Network come up with interventions that respond to the needs of communities based on their own assessments, while the PIND P4P facilitation team provides needed capacity building.
51 trainings, workshops, seminars and events aimed at building local capacity in peacebuilding and conflict sensitivity were attended by 6,858 participants. The trainings and the 102 reports and assessments which were produced using peacebuilding data contributed to an increase in the P4P chapters’ reputation in their respective states, resulting in 28 partnerships with government and private sector actors on conflict mitigation and peacebuilding activities.
2016 also marked the first time that funds allocated by PIND for the Network were handed over to the Central Working Committee (CWC) to be administered on behalf of the network. In April 2016, the P4P held its first Annual General Meeting (AGM), completely organized by the CWC with very little supervision from PIND. There was a unanimous consensus that the 2016 AGM was the best organized so far drawing dignitaries like the Deputy Governor and the Speaker of Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly. All nine state chapters now have their own fully functional offices for their operations. As an integral part of the institutionalization of the P4P network, it has also created its strategic plans and standard operating protocols (SOPs) to move the administration of the chapters from adhoc governance to standards entrenched within an established framework that can be referenced by all.
This formalizing of structures and tightening of procedures is already beginning to pay off for the P4P chapters: four of the nine state chapters have received international funding to carry out activities in their states on election-related programs, often without PIND’s help.