…Plateau violence recorded 737 fatalities, 282 incidents in 2 years

The Federal Government is considering developing a national peace framework to confront the raging insecurity afflicting most parts of the country, Director-General of the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR), Dr Joseph Ochogwu, has said.

Speaking in Abuja yesterday at a conference on peace and conflict resolution in Nigeria, organised by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation-West Africa, with the theme, ‘Peace and Conflict Resolution in Nigeria: Rethinking Strategies for Sustainable Peace,’ Ochogwu warned that sustainable peace required a shift from reactive security operations to preventive strategies that tackle the structural conditions enabling insurgency, banditry, kidnapping and communal violence to thrive.
He further noted that Nigeria’s worsening insecurity will persist unless the government addresses the governance failures, economic inequalities, unresolved communal grievances and institutional weaknesses fuelling violence across the country.

The IPCR Director-General argued that Nigeria’s security crisis cannot be understood solely as a failure of military or policing capacity, but must also be examined against the country’s political structure, the distribution of economic opportunities, the management of diversity, and the capacity of public institutions to resolve grievances peacefully.
Ochogwu identified the concentration of political and fiscal authority at the federal level, disputes over citizenship and belonging, economic inequality, uneven development and institutional weaknesses as major fault lines that continue to undermine peace.

He warned that poverty, unemployment, inadequate infrastructure, high living costs and weak public services could erode public confidence in government and intensify competition over scarce resources, particularly when combined with exclusion, impunity and organised criminal activities.
He said failures in policing, justice delivery, land administration, and public accountability can push citizens toward self-help arrangements and armed groups, further weakening the legitimacy of public institutions.
The IPCR chief said these factors often interact, turning local disputes into wider security crises, with land disagreements escalating into ethnic confrontations and economic grievances exploited for political or criminal purposes.

He added that the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, criminal financing networks, misinformation, climate change and environmental degradation were compounding the challenges.
The consequences, he said, extend beyond casualties and displacement to food security, national productivity, investment, democratic participation and citizens’ confidence in the state.
He cited recurring violence in Plateau State, where 282 security incidents resulting in 737 fatalities were recorded between January 2024 and August 2025, according to figures attributed to the European Union Agency for Asylum and Armed Conflict Location and Event Data.

He cautioned against reducing the violence to ethnic or religious differences, arguing that historical grievances, contested land rights, local power relations, criminality, impunity and declining public trust in security institutions could combine to sustain cycles of retaliation.
The IPCR director-general stressed that military operations remained necessary against armed groups. Still, lasting stabilisation would depend on restoring public services, rebuilding livelihoods, supporting displaced populations and strengthening local administration.
Ochogwu also linked Nigeria’s peace-building prospects to governance reforms, including state policing, local government autonomy and electricity-sector decentralisation.
He said decentralised policing could improve local intelligence, strengthen familiarity with community dynamics and reduce response times. Still, he warned it could also expose citizens to political interference, human rights abuses, and uneven institutional capacity.

On local government autonomy, the IPCR chief said the financial independence of the country’s 774 local government areas could strengthen grassroots governance if accompanied by transparent spending, credible elections, administrative capacity and public participation.
He maintained that transferring funds to local councils would not automatically improve governance unless the resources translated into better infrastructure, healthcare, education and other essential services.
He also called for stronger conflict research and early-warning mechanisms, stressing that reports of emerging threats must trigger timely action by the relevant authorities.
“Early warning without early response risks frustrating communities that report threats but see no meaningful intervention,” he said.
Ochogwu said the IPCR would continue to strengthen the National Conflict Early Warning and Early Response System, conduct policy research and support dialogue, mediation and reconciliation to prevent disputes from escalating into violence.

Earlier, Angela Odah, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation-West Africa representative, highlighted how worsening insecurity had turned ordinary activities, including road travel and moving agricultural produce, into dangerous undertakings.
Odah said kidnappers, bandits and criminal gangs had made communities across the country increasingly vulnerable. At the same time, repeated attacks had forced many rural residents in northern Nigeria to spend years in internally displaced persons’ camps.