Paper short abstract:

Women in Nigeria have engaged in various peacebuilding and conflict resolution initiatives. Yet, little is known about their roles even though Niger Delta women are playing a key role in mediating non-violent oil protests, in the North, they are living through Boko Haram and ethno-religious crises.

Paper long abstract:

In thinking about the extent to which Nigerian conflicts have been reported, most studies ignore women’s participation in peace dialogue. Building peace necessitates visioning what constitutes peace across cultures, ethnicities, and between genders. Women’s vocabularies, cultural repertoires of knowledge and categories of understanding are very important, but in Nigeria, they tend to fade to the background during official peace negotiations. At the grassroots community levels, women groups such as the Federation of Ogoni Women’s Association, Federation of Muslim Women’s Association and Ijaw Women connect, take the centre stage in peacebuilding discourses and initiatives yet, their active roles are ignored. The aim of this paper is to show that women are an untapped resource in the peace and conflict dynamics and calls for significant attention to the local level participation of women in Nigeria.