Conflict Research Network West Africa (CORN West Africa), has called for strategic focus on peace events and peacebuilding activities in Nigeria.
Executive Director of the CORN West Africa, Dr. Timpreye Felix Allison, in a statement on Monday, said it is important to give attention and equal visibility to peace and peacebuilding activities as conflicts and insurgencies currently receive in Nigeria and across the region and the entire world today.
Insisting the attempt is an integral part of broader conflict resolution frameworks, Dr. Allison’s submission aligns with his organisation’s planned User Engagement Dialogue on its digital peace platform named ” Nigeria Peace Web (NPW)”, to be launched at 12:00noon of Wednesday, March 11, 2026, at the Sheu Musa Yar’Adua Foundation, Abuja.
Dr. Allison, a researcher and policy expert, said CORN West Africa, with funding from the UK government through it’s Foreign, Development & and Commonwealth (FCDO)-funded SPRiNG Programme, has developed the NPW to support peace actors and actions in Nigeria.
The platform, now in the final demonstration phase, will provide verified peacebuilding data to inform policy responses, support peace programming, and help researchers more accurately and reliably report on peace.
According to him, the initiative was conceived to address the growing imbalance in global research and media reporting where conflict statistics dominate discourse while peace initiatives occurring within communities remain largely undocumented.
“Peace and peacebuilding activities deserve the same visibility and analytical attention that conflicts and insurgencies currently receive in global discourse,” Dr. Allison said. “Across many communities in Nigeria and West Africa, peace initiatives are happening every day, yet they are rarely documented in ways that inform research, policy, or public understanding.”
He noted that the urgency of the initiative is underscored by converging global, regional, and national security trends.
“While conflict datasets such as ACLED and Uppsala Conflict Data are widely available and extensively analysed, peace initiatives remain largely under documented,” Dr. Allison said.
“This gap limits our ability to learn from local interventions and build stronger evidence for sustainable peace.”
Across West Africa, insecurity has also been intensified by the proliferation of illicit weapons. Research by the Small arms Survey estimates that more than eleven million illicit small arms circulate across the region, fueling insurgency, banditry, communal violence, and organised crime.
Similarly, the Economic Community of West African States reports that small arms and light weapons account for more than seventy percent of weapons used in violent conflicts across West Africa, particularly across the Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin.
Nigeria reflects the impact of these regional security pressures. Investigations by Amnesty International indicate that more than ten thousand people were killed in attacks by armed groups and criminal gangs across northern and central Nigeria between 2023 and 2025.
The violence Involves multiple actors including Boko Haram insurgents, factions linked to Islamic State West Africa Province, armed bandit groups, and kidnapping syndicates operating across rural and peri urban communities.
Since the Boko Haram insurgency began in 2009, the conflict has killed more than forty thousand people and displaced about two million people across Nigeria’s north east, according to humanitarian estimates.
States such as Plateau State, Kaduna State, and Katsina State have experienced persistent violence linked to communal tensions, banditry, and kidnapping.
Dr. Allison however noted that even in the midst of these challenges, communities across the affected states continue to implement numerous grassroots peacebuilding initiatives, including dialogue platforms, mediation processes, reconciliation meetings, and community led prevention efforts supported by traditional leaders, civil society organisations, youth groups, and faith based institutions.
“The reality is that peace work is happening quietly in many communities,” he said. “Traditional leaders, civil society organisations, youth groups, and faith institutions are constantly mediating disputes and promoting dialogue. These efforts deserve to be documented and amplified.”
He explained that the User Engagement Dialogue on the Nigeria Peace Web will help to enhance the platform’s user friendliness and relevance, and ensure that peace efforts are visible and systematically documented.
“The goal of this platform is simple,” Dr. Allison added. “If conflict data matters for policy and research, peace data should matter as well. By mapping peace events, actors, and beneficiaries through credible reports from academia, journalists, and civil society organisations, we aim to strengthen knowledge sharing and support evidence based peacebuilding. That is why the event happening in Abuja on Wednesday is important. It will provide a forum for the potential users and beneficiaries of the Nigeria Peace Web to make suggestions that will make the platform meet their needs.”
Participants in the User Engagement Dialogue will include local peacebuilding actors, NGOs, and researchers. Others include state and national policymakers, security sector actors, donors, and members of the diplomatic community.
The Nigeria Peace Web is the main deliverable of CORN West Africa’s Nigeria Peace Actors and Initiatives in Data (NPAID) project funded under the SPRiNG Programme. The project is piloting in Plateau State, Kaduna State, and Katsina State, with plans to expand across all thirty six states of Nigeria.
