Published October 28, 2015
By The Fund for Peace, Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta, and Academic Associates PeaceWorks*

In the run-up to the 2015 Nigeria general and state elections, the Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND) deployed the Integrated Peace and Development Unit (IPDU) in three states to undertake a holistic portfolio of interrelated activities for early warning, assessment, prevention, and management of violent conflict. The three components consisted of the following: IPDU worked with Community Life Project (CLP) to develop an SMS platform for Peace Messaging conflict early warning in which over 2,000 messages were received and analyzed. IPDU contracted AA Peaceworks, to implement their Community Stakeholder Network (CSN) approach to conflict management, which had proved highly successful in the 2007, 2011, and 2012 elections. Committees were trained in 18 LGAs and successfully mitigated over three hundred cases of elevated conflict risk. Showing the human cost of election violence: as part of the project’s media messaging videos portrayed interviews with widows and their families to deter participation in election violence. Data from both components (CSNs and SMS) were triangulated against data on the Peace Map for cross-validation and analysis.

* Nate Haken, Patricia Taft, Hannah Blyth, Nkasi Wodu, and Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta and Academic Associates PeaceWorks staff contributed to this report.