The 10 governors, who met at USIP on April 23-25, constitute an important policy-making community in Nigeria. All elected in 2023, they will collectively help govern for four years over 34% of the population of Nigeria. State governments are vital to Nigeria’s decentralized political structure, allowing for more tailored responses to the diverse challenges of governance in a diverse nation. Despite Nigeria’s upheavals, it remains an anchor in the arc of West African democracies, a center of vibrant civil society and a leader in the regional bloc, ECOWAS. The US and international partners must strengthen efforts to stabilize Nigeria as a central part of any strategy to build peace and security across West Africa. Working with Nigeria’s 36 influential states will be crucial.
Eight of the 10 governors in Washington came from northwestern Nigeria, a region at the southern tip of the geographic Sahel and bordering Niger, the most recent Sahel nation to suffer a military coup. The rulers have to deal with many of the same ills that have fueled more than a decade of communal violence and extremist insurgencies across the Sahel: ineffective governance, corruption and the people’s unmet economic and social needs.
Nigeria is facing serious conflicts in its north. Extremist violence in the northeastern states that killed over 350,000 people as of 2020 has declined since its peak but is still displacing hundreds of thousands, notably in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states. In the northwest, of Nigeria more populous region, groups of organized criminals or “bandits”, are committing mass killings, kidnappings, burning villages and other violence on a war-like scale in Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, Kebbi and Kaduna. ONE 2019 review found robbery to be the cause of almost half of the murders in Nigeria. The International Committee of the Red Cross and other analysts they now describe it as Nigeria’s most serious security challenge. While robbery is driven by the criminal pursuit of profit rather than ideology, various analyzes warn of “regular cooperation” and coexistence between bandit organizations and fragment groups of the extremist movements Boko Haram and the Islamic State of West Africa Province.
In central Nigeria, insecurity is caused by inter-communal or farmer-herdsmen violence and some banditry, in states such as Plateau, Benue and Nasarawa. In the south, a separatist movement, the Indigenous People of Biafra, is linked to violent crime and remains the main security threat. Nationwide, food insecurity and Nigeria worst economic crisis in decades — including annual inflation reaching 30% — exacerbate the challenges for governments at all levels.
Nigerian governors in Washington
The governors of northwestern Nigeria, as well as their counterparts from Benue, Niger and Plateau states, joined international and US experts and officials for three days at USIP to exchange ideas, data and lessons on civilian strategies, including building of peace and economic development, to shrink the root causes of violent unrest in Nigeria. Like many African and international policymakers for many years, “I thought about … a kinetic approach” leading to armed force in dealing with violent unrest, said Sokoto State Deputy Governor Idris Muhammad Gobir, but “I am coming home … with a changed mind ».
The symposium discussed ways to implement peacebuilding — through mediation, dialogues and the central principle of full inclusion of all parts of communities facing violence. While the public policy debate often points to poverty as a driver of violence, the symposium highlighted what peacebuilding experts emphasize are the particular risks posed by social and economic inequalities and from governance that does not respond to the needs of citizens. Niger State Governor Mohammed Umar Bago said the symposium helped clarify the links between these inequalities and insecurity: “government neglect, lack of transparency” “cursed development and created gaps between the governed and the government” . That focus underscored “how critical community engagement will be to help solve many issues of both insecurity and poverty,” he said.
Business representatives and U.S. economic affairs diplomats, including Undersecretary of State Jose Fernandez, provided insights on how nations can attract investment and on U.S. programs they can leverage to spur inclusive economic growth. For states in Nigeria, as across Africa, investment expansion – linked to rule of law reforms and aimed at boosting prosperity for the general population, rather than a few investment owners – is critical to transforming long-standing underdevelopment international development efforts.
Nigerians have for decades been building a proven capacity and institutions for peace building work, both by civil society and state governments. Since the 1990s, two Kaduna-based religious leaders, Imam Mohammed Asafa and Pastor James Wooye, have been building peace – including in partnership with USIP – through Center for Interfaith Mediation. Citizen and community activists form a Network of Nigerian Mediators who support local mediations and dialogues. USIP’s work in Nigeria is led by prominent civil society leaders of the Nigeria Task Force on Peacebuilding and Governance.
Plateau and Cantoona States operate special peace-building agencies that mediate to stop violent conflicts, such as fighting between farmers and pastoralist communities in border regions of the states of Riyom and Kaura, Kaduna Governor Uba Sani noted. Other states have offices that carry out similar peacebuilding components.
The symposium allowed the governors to “cross-talk”, he said Governor Katsina, Dikko Radda. “I think we will take what we learned here back home,” said Sani of Kaduna before returning to hosts his counterparts at the Northern Nigeria Governors Forum. At this meeting, on ways Nigerian states can improve the security of their people, the chairman of the forum, Gombe Governor, Muhammadu Yahaya, he emphasized need to stabilize the region through economic development, better and universal education and skills development for young people and stronger regional coordination.
US officials who met the governors in Washington then flew to a meeting of the high-level bilateral committee that guides the countries’ cooperation. Those the talks were extended the issues of increasing investment and strengthening conflict resolution in Nigeria, “particularly by supporting state peace-building agencies.”
Supporting security advances by Nigerian states
The U.S. and international partners can strengthen state-level peacebuilding capacities, support transnational security cooperation, and foster linkages between subnational and federal initiatives. Support for peacebuilding initiatives at the state level should prioritize their integration into local community efforts. They should encourage the full inclusion of participants in government, security and community. Programs funded by the US government through organizations such as USIP, Mercy Corps, and Search for Common Ground offer models for such approaches.
Nigerian partners can support the efforts of Nigerian states as innovators by promoting successful policies or programs as models to be leveraged. Kaduna and Katsina states have launched “early warning and early response” systems for local conflicts that within months helped community leaders to it quickly subsides dozens of violent incidents. Katsina’s system helps to reduce grievances related to injustice through its coordination with the “Multi-door Courthouse” — a mediation center designed to offer free and fast access to justice, resolving local disputes without lengthy, costly court cases. of Kano State community policing and youth empowerment programs demonstrate proactive, inclusive approaches to improving public safety and social cohesion at the local level.
International partners should support greater transnational coordination on Nigeria’s violent crises, which easily spread across state borders. (State borders themselves can lead to conflict, for example when land ownership and demarcations are unclear.) Supportive international policies can participate in the forums of regional governors in Nigeria.
Research and experience amply show that stabilization efforts in the Sahel and West Africa must reverse years of failure through a narrow overreliance on armed security responses that have failed to address the roots of the problems and only escalated violence. Nigeria’s new crop of northern governors represent a strong level of policy-making through which the only sustainable strategy is encouraged – one that prioritizes good governance, the attack on corruption, sound economic investment and a significant expansion of opportunity for the Nigeria’s huge youth population. Effective international cooperation in advancing these imperatives can only be achieved with the full commitment of the nation as a whole: not only the Nigerian national government but also states, marginalized communities and pro-democracy citizens at large.
Chris Kwaja is Deputy Director of USIP in Nigeria and Associate Professor of International Relations and Strategic Studies at Modibbo Adama University in Yola.
Matthew Reitman is a program director in the Africa team at USIP.
PHOTO: Niger State Governor Mohammed Umar Bago, left foreground, makes a point to fellow governors, officials and experts at a USIP symposium on ways to use US partnership and peacebuilding approaches to address the crises in Nigeria and enhancing stability.
The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s).