Nigeria

International Alert has worked in Nigeria for more than 15 years, delivering evidence-based peacebuilding that supports communities, governments, and civil society to tackle the root causes of conflict and insecurity.

Our team is based in Abuja, with presence in Sokoto and Benue States – areas where security, development, and climate pressures converge. We run projects focused on preventing conflict, strengthening social cohesion, and building resilience to climate change.

We build lasting peace in Nigeria by bringing different groups together so they can resolve tensions before they escalate. We bolster local structures that help prevent and manage disputes. We also support early warning systems that allow communities and authorities to flag and respond to emerging risks. Our focus is also on improving trust between citizens and government at all levels, and broadening access to justice for affected communities.

We strengthen coordination across humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding efforts (the ‘nexus’ approach). To do that, we work with governments and partners to ensure that policies and programmes take conflict and gender into account – so that they do not inadvertently deepen existing tensions or leave anyone behind. This includes our work on the Women, Peace and Security agenda – the international framework that recognises women’s essential role in preventing and resolving conflict.

Lasting conflict resolution in Nigeria is impossible without the meaningful involvement of affected communities. This is why we champion locally led peacebuilding and work to remove barriers that keep women, young people, and marginalised groups out of decision-making, creating concrete opportunities for them to shape governance and peace processes.

Some of our most significant work in Nigeria has focused on people who have experienced the most severe forms of conflict. Between 2015-2016, our flagship programme supported women and girls who had been held captive by Boko Haram to reintegrate into their communities. Our efforts helped to reduce stigma and challenge attitudes that justified sexual and gender-based violence. We also work with children who face deep-rooted rejection – including those born of Boko Haram sexual violence, and children formerly associated with armed groups – supporting them to rebuild their lives and find acceptance.

As climate change is increasingly driving tensions in Nigeria, we use conflict analysis and other peacebuilding tools to help different groups understand these risks and to ensure that climate adaptation programmes effectively address these.

Our ongoing peacebuilding projects in Nigeria

RECAP (Resilience, Engagement, and Conflict Prevention): In Sokoto State, we work with communities at high risk of violence to help them resolve disputes peacefully, improve their livelihoods, and access health and protection services.
Powering Peace through Climate Action: In Benue and Sokoto States, we bring marginalised communities and local governments together around shared climate and conflict challenges – using the need to adapt to climate change impacts as a starting point for building trust and cooperation.

Our partners

Understanding conflict context in Nigeria

Competition over resources – land, water, and grazing routes – and power has long driven conflict between communities, particularly in rural areas. Climate change, population growth and environmental degradation reduce what is available, while limited access to justice, governance challenges, and lack of effective instruments to resolve disputes compound these pressures.

In north-west and parts of north-central Nigeria, this has created conditions in which banditry has grown from isolated incidents of criminal activity into organised crime networks. These groups often operate from difficult to govern rural terrain and impose their own rules on communities where the state is largely absent. They steal cattle, raid villages, commit sexual violence, kidnap for ransom, carry out attacks on schools and highways, and engage in illegal mining. The humanitarian impacts are profound: mass displacement, disruption of agricultural production, food insecurity, and the closure of schools and health services across affected areas.

These ungoverned spaces do not emerge by accident. Where government institutions are weak, underfunded, or seen as partisan, communities lose trust in the state’s ability to protect them or resolve disputes fairly. Without accessible justice mechanisms, grievances over land and resources fester. Without accountability, violence becomes a viable tool – for criminal gain, and for political ends. Armed groups exploit this vacuum, and in some areas have developed links to extremist networks and transnational criminal organisations that extend beyond Nigeria’s borders.

Political dynamics deepen this further. Nigeria’s highly competitive political environment creates strong incentives for politicians to mobilise support along ethnic and religious lines, turning existing grievances into organised conflict. Young people – many of them unemployed and economically excluded – are particularly vulnerable to being recruited as political thugs or militia members. In the north-west and north-east especially, decades of lagging behind in education, healthcare, and economic opportunity have created a large population of people who feel deliberately sidelined. That sense of injustice – the belief that exclusion is intentional, not incidental – is what makes grievances politically explosive.

This instability does not stop at Nigeria’s borders. It is driving displacement and regional instability across the Lake Chad Basin and wider West Africa, with implications for regional cooperation and security.

Featured story

Addressing resource conflicts and climate change impact in Fiidi, Nigeria

A powerful story of reconciliation between the Jukun and Tiv communities overcoming climate-driven resource conflicts and adapting to climate pressures together.

Explore our impact