Contesting localisation in interfaith peacebuilding in Northern Nigeria

ABSTRACT

Amidst a ‘local turn’ in peacebuilding, donors have seized on the idea of ‘localising’ peacebuilding programmes. Donors have sought to include actors who have local knowledge and connections in order to make interventions more context-sensitive. Yet programmes premised on the fractiousness of Muslim-Christian relations, as many in northern Nigeria are, are inevitably absorbed into over-arching narratives of global civilisational encounter. How does the local turn play out in this context of heightened international sensitivities? Drawing on the critical peacebuilding literature, this article analyses the origins of USAID’s push to localise its interfaith peace-building efforts in northern Nigeria, and the ambivalence of categorises like ‘local’ and ‘international’ in its subsequent partnership with the Kaduna-based Interfaith Mediation Centre on the TOLERANCE programme. While the categories of local and international are indeed contested and fluid, there are limits to how far local partners can successfully leverage these ideas in the context of unequal power relations.

KEYWORDS:

• Donor partnerships
• local turn
• interfaith
• peacebuilding
• Nigeria

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the organisers and participants at the Nigerian Politics panel of the African Studies Association UK conference at the University of Birmingham, September 2018 for their comments and feedback. The comments of the editor, the associate editor and two anonymous reviewers were helpful in re-orienting and clarifying the ideas in this paper. Thanks must go to Sule Buba for ongoing inspiration, and Luisa Enria for astute feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. See (Scacco & Warren, 2018).

2. https://www.hdcentre.org/activities/jos-plateau-state-nigeria/< accessed 22 January 2020 >

3. https://www.peacedirect.org/hope-amidst-horror-northern-nigeria/< accessed 22 January 2020 >

4. https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id = 53,675 < accessed 22 January 2020 >

5. The term northern Nigeria, with northern uncapitalized, is used throughout to refer to the 19 states and Federal Capital Territory which were carved out of the old Northern Region (Ostien, 2018, p. 38). It includes the Middle Belt.

6. Social contact theory, originally developed by Allport et al. (1954), states that, under certain conditions, interaction with members of other social groups improves out-group attitudes and reduces prejudice and discriminatory behaviour.

7. It later expanded into Imo in the southeast.

8. See also the letters to presidents George W. Bush (Abrams, 2001) and Barack Obama (Leo, 2011).

9. Initially USCIRF’s preferred candidate was the Nigeria’s Inter-Religious Council (NIREC) which they urged the U.S. Government to help to expand to state and local levels.

10. These included the British High Commission, the European Union, Christian AID United Kingdom, the French Embassy, UNICEF, the International Republican Institute and UNDP.

11. https://africa.harvard.edu/event/pastor-and-imam-nigeria-interfaith-strategy-peacebuilding-prospects-and <Accessed 12 August 2019 >

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Portia Roelofs

Dr Portia Roelofs is the Clayman-Fulford Junior Research Fellow in Politics and Political Thought at St Anne’s College, Oxford. Her doctoral research, conducted at the London School of Economics, offers an analysis of ‘Lagos Model’ in southwest Nigeria. She has degrees from the University of Oxford and SOAS, University of London, in addition to having spent time as a visiting researcher at the universities of Maiduguri and Ibadan.  Her publications unpack how ideas of good governance, transparency and legitimate distribution are contested in political competition. She also writes about climate change and the politics of knowledge production.