In Nigeria’s North-West, where communities face persistent violence, a civil society coalition is advocating for a fundamental shift in strategy. The Partnership Against Violent Extremism (PAVE) network asserts that sustainable peace in Katsina State will be forged not solely on the battlefield, but within the communities themselves through a comprehensive grassroots approach.
Professor Bashir Kurfi, the State Chairman of PAVE, provided a detailed assessment of the Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (PCVE) landscape. He highlighted that groups like the ‘Lakurawa’—a local term for bandits and violent actors—thrive by exploiting systemic vulnerabilities. “These are not isolated security incidents,” Kurfi explained. “They are symptoms of deeper, interconnected crises: weak local governance, porous borders that facilitate movement and arms trafficking, and profound socio-economic despair in rural areas.”
This despair is fueled by economic marginalization and staggering youth unemployment, creating a pool of disenfranchised individuals susceptible to recruitment by armed groups. Kurfi decried the fragility of community safety systems, which often lack the resources and coordination to detect early signs of radicalization or effectively respond to threats, thereby creating a vacuum that violent actors eagerly fill.
“There is a growing consensus among stakeholders,” Kurfi stated, “that military and kinetic responses, while necessary, are insufficient on their own. They address the manifestations of violence but not its underlying causes. We are advancing people-centred approaches that seek to heal the social fabric and remove the very conditions extremism needs to grow.”
This philosophy is being operationalized through concrete, multi-tiered initiatives. PAVE has facilitated capacity-building programmes and multi-stakeholder workshops that unite an unprecedented coalition: government officials, security agencies, traditional rulers, women and youth groups, civil society organisations, and technical experts. The core of this effort is the training of Technical Working Groups on co-creating State and Local Action Plans (SAPs and LAPs). This ensures prevention strategies are not imposed from above but are informed by hyper-local realities, needs, and knowledge.
“These engagements have opened vital new platforms for dialogue,” Kurfi noted. “For the first time in many areas, community elders and youth, women’s groups and local government officials are sitting together to jointly diagnose the specific drivers of conflict in their district and design context-specific solutions.” Furthermore, peer-learning exchanges between state PAVE chapters across the North-West are helping to reduce duplication of efforts, strengthen regional partnerships, and promote a shared sense of ownership over PCVE initiatives.
At the most granular level, the network has rolled out 15-day community resilience campaigns in several Katsina communities. These campaigns move beyond abstract policy to practical, on-the-ground peacebuilding. Through peace education sessions and structured community dialogues, residents are reframing their role from passive victims of violence to active guardians of local security. They are equipped to identify early warning signs, counter extremist narratives with positive alternatives, and build inter-community trust.
While commending progress—such as aligning local efforts with the National Policy Framework and National Action Plan—Kurfi was candid about persistent challenges. These include the entrenched presence of armed groups, continued exclusion of youth from decision-making and economic opportunities, weak intelligence and early-warning linkages in some local government areas, and the critical gap of limited PCVE integration into official sectoral plans and budgets.
“We must internalize that violent extremism is not merely a security issue to be defeated,” Kurfi stressed. “It is a multifaceted governance, development, and social resilience challenge. Defeating it requires a correspondingly multifaceted response.”
He concluded with targeted calls to action: for residents to remain vigilant and reject divisive narratives; for traditional and religious leaders to leverage their moral authority to promote tolerance; for youth and women’s groups to lead campaigns for inclusion and positive storytelling; and crucially, for Ministries, Departments, Agencies (MDAs) and Local Government Areas (LGAs) to institutionalize PCVE by mainstreaming it into their core planning and budgeting processes. This final point underscores that for grassroots peace to flourish, it must be sustainably resourced and supported by the formal structures of the state.
