There is an urgent need for private sector investment in conflict management, prevention, and resolution – Ochogwu

Joseph Ochogwu is the Director General and Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR). Ochogwu holds a bachelor of science degree in political Science, from the University of Jos; Master of Science, Political Science, University of Lagos; Master of Arts (Merit) Peace Studies, University of Bradford, Bradford, United Kingdom and Doctor of Philosophy in International Relations and & Strategic Studies, University of Jos. IPCR Director General is a visiting associate professor at the Nile University of Nigeria, Bingham University, and serves as a facilitator and examiner with the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). In this interview with John Osadolor and Cynthia Egboboh, he speaks on the roles private sector investors can play in conflict prevention, resolution and management, amongst others…Excerpt:

Can you talk us through what the IPCR does?

The Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR) is an agency of the Federal Government that is domiciled under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Our primary responsibility is to carry out research in the areas of conflict prevention, conflict resolution, and conflict management within Nigeria and Africa. The distinctive feature of the Institute is the non-use of force in the management of conflict, what in the public domain is called the non-kinetic approach to conflict management, and all that.

So, we look at the soft side of conflict management in the areas of negotiation, dialogue, mediation, and alternative kinds of dispute resolution. We are not adversarial in approach, so we don’t do issues around litigation. We believe that whatever kind of crisis or problem bedevils society or communities can be resolved at the table of negotiation, mediation, and engagement.

“The distinctive feature of the Institute is the non-use of force in the management of conflict, what in the public domain is called the non-kinetic approach to conflict management, and all that.”

It is also instructive to note that we work with other government ministries, departments, and agencies. We work with the tri-services, that is the army, the navy, the air force, the police, the DSS, the paramilitary groups, and other components of the government side. We also work with iNGOs, development partners, as well as community-based organisations.

So, we work both at the top level and at the bottom level of society to ensure that we provide a middle ground in terms of understanding the need to transition from a culture of violence to a culture of peace, which is a very daunting task. Knowing that society over the years has been entrenched in the use of violence, in the management of conflicts and differences, and all that. So, we try to change that narrative.

On the governance side also, we try to ensure that there are best governance practices to ensure service delivery. Because the number one objective of any government is conflict management.

The Institute has its respective directorates. As I said, we undertake research, so it has its direct arm; we have the Defense and Security Studies, we have the Democracy and Development Studies, we have Research and Policy Analysis, and we have External Conflict Prevention and Resolution. We also have Internal Conflict Prevention and Resolution and then we have the National Peace Academy, which is our training arm.

How do we undertake our activities? We don’t work alone because peace is an all-inclusive thing. It’s an all-stakeholder affair. So, there is no way one institution or one individual can achieve peace, so we do collaborations and partnerships with different kinds of stakeholders. As I said, we work with respective NGOs.

For example, our National Peace Academy trains all these levels of stakeholders we are talking about. We have the Basic Conflict Management course, the Advanced Conflict Management course, and then the Strategic Mediation and Negotiation course. We also have the membership of the Peace Institute.

Of course, we are moving towards giving out fellowships, and of course the only fellow for the Institute right now is former President and Head of State, General Gowon, who is our only fellow. So, he carries the FPI.

“Once you have that level of synergy, you’ll be addressing issues around poverty, issues around education, issues around several things, infrastructure, and several other things, because, at that level, citizens are carried along.”

We work with the media as well. We just finished co-joint training with the National Counter-terrorism Centre in the Office of the National Security Advisor, where we delivered advice book training. Last week also we delivered a training, a particularly unique training that was conceived when I just came in here.

We call it the Forgiveness Course. The need for society to learn how to forgive themselves, from the family level—husband, wife, parents, and children—and then to the community level—marketplaces, the workplace, as well as between government and citizens. For us to understand that, we need this soft emotional power dimension in how we run our society for us to get things going.

I think that there is a vacuum in terms of the private sector component in the area of non-forcible conflict management dimensions that we’re talking about and why there is an urgent need for private sector investment in conflict management, conflict prevention, and conflict resolution. You can’t leave these activities to state actors alone. You can’t leave it to iNGOs alone because iNGOs do not partner.

The NGOs have their line of interest and their programmatic focus area. So, as indigenous entities, we need to prioritise. And you know too that anywhere there is conflict, businesses suffer.

As you know, businesses prosper anywhere there is peace. So, there is a need for Nigerian businesses, trusts, and foundations to invest highly in this area of peace. This is because we are entrenched in a culture of violence; we need to creatively and innovatively navigate our way out of it. Otherwise, the trend we are seeing with the increasing proliferation and diffusion of violence across the different levels of our society is very problematic and dangerous. That is why we need to work together in partnership and collaboration to try to do the best that we can to mitigate and reduce the level of violence that we are currently experiencing. Our trend is also going to those who have the authority to use violence in society, that is, the military, the police, and other agencies that have the authority to bear arms on behalf of the citizens of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. We need to train them to know the legitimate use of this weapon. If they learn this emotional intelligence and the non-kinetic approaches in engagement in terms of mediation, negotiation, and engagement, the use of violence will be minimised even from their side.

Of course, we work with ECOWAS, and we work with the African Union too at the international levels and other nation-states. A critical component for us here is how we can help the government in power to achieve the objectives. There is ongoing research…

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(Cuts in)… What is that research all about?

The research is about what we call the formalisation of scavengers in the informal waste management sector. The essence is that scavengers have been marginalised. They do very good work for society, but they are stigmatised, stereotyped, as well as seen as threats in most communities and all that.

So, how do we include them in our society?

So, there is a need to begin to find how we can develop frameworks to include them in our systems, in our primary healthcare system, in our health insurance system, and in the basic education system. You’d be surprised that people live in those places with children who are not going to school. We need to have a programmatic focus for that direction.

So, that is the kind of creative ideas that we project in this place; we try to see how we can mainstream this whole thing in the wider society to see how it works.

But as I said, the private sector has a major role to play in this creative industry of peacebuilding. We cannot afford to let that sector out.

Can you itemise places or crises that you’ve helped to douse or bring peace to the community or any group of people?

Yes, I think in Ebonyi State, the border community between Ebonyi and Cross River State comes to mind here. Just last year they celebrated 5 years of peaceful coexistence; that is not to say that no communities are fighting in the Benue-Ebonyi axis, and even within Ebonyi State, though. It tells you the complex nature of conflict and how it is an intricate thing that needs to be crafted, not contracted.

This institute has been involved in the Niger Delta crisis at a very, very strategic level. I think in 2002-2003, the institute convened a strategic round-table, a close-off round-table on the Niger Delta crisis. And how did we engage? We brought in all the intelligentsia’s, intellectuals of the Niger Delta for that round-table, and General TY Danjuma was then the Minister of Defense there. He chaired that round-table.

I was personal assistant to the chief executive then, so I can relate to that story very well. And of course, it was agreed for an amnesty to be granted to those groups of people. President Obasanjo didn’t do it, but I think when Yar’adua came, he ran with it.

So that is the kind of strategic policy advisory tool that we provide. We have also provided advice on small arms, light weapon proliferation because the easy accessibility and availability of this weapon makes violence endemic in our society. So, therefore, you need to control these easy accesses.

We should be having a commission, but I think the policy struggles around it among the different policy stakeholders, but right now we have the National Centre for Small Arms and Light Weapons. What that kind of advisory does is that it provides the government with an insight into problems that people don’t understand, but in a more creative way. As I mentioned earlier on, there is a proliferation and diffusion of violence, so there is an endemic culture of violence that is prevalent in our society.

If we need to deal with them, we need to carry out target-specific interventions. We also work on what we call the Inter-religious Peace Building. You’ll be surprised to know that the Institute was greatly involved in the formation of the Nigeria Inter-religious Council (NIREC).

On the international front, we are part of the Sudanese peace process. You might not understand that the Nigerian government invested heavily in the Sudan crisis, where they brought in the conflicting parties, and they were in Nigeria for over six months. Yes, that is to tell you how expensive peacemaking can be.

How far have you gone with engagement with the business community? And what specific roles would you say they should perform?

I think that is an untapped area. I’m aware that the TY Danjuma Foundation is doing certain things in the Northeast through the Victim Support Fund. There are other kinds of initiatives that they do. But what we’re talking about is a target-specific programmatic focus on violence reduction, on peace-building in local communities.

That space has been left for development partners and iNGOs. So, when you’re talking about issues around domestic violence, for example, you hardly find our people working in that space, particularly the private sector and all that. If you talk about community violence, for example, you know how people need to live in peace.

With all of the research that you’ve done so far, what is the commonest factor that is driving conflict in Nigeria?

Yeah, I think if you look at it some people will tell you poverty, some people will tell you certain things, but I think for me, I would say there is a debt, that is, there is a deficit in understanding on how governance should happen. Governance is like a continuum on the demand side and the supply side.

There is a deficit, even on the supply side, in understanding that service delivery is ultimate, and not service delivery for the sake of service delivery, but quality service delivery to meet the demand side. On the demand side, which is the citizen side also, there is a deficit in terms of how they ask from the governance which is the supply side, because a stable society is where you have both the demand side and the supply side meet at equilibrium. But here, there is disequilibrium.

It’s unstable, completely unstable. And once it’s unstable, that society will suffer some level of instability, the type that we’re having now. So, there is a need for a common ground approach, both on the side of the state, which is on the demand side, that is the government, and the citizens, on the supply side and the demand side.

There is a need for some level of synergy. Once you have that level of synergy, you’ll be addressing issues around poverty, issues around education, issues around several things, infrastructure, and several other things, because, at that level, citizens are carried along. The government is carried along. So, there is a common ground of understanding.

And then the local context might differ from one community to another community. So, for some communities, it might be a road, for other communities, it might be schools, for other communities, it might be a market, for other communities, it might be a sense of inclusion.

So, I won’t say poverty. I will just say there is a need for more understanding and knowledge between the citizens and the government. There’s a demand on the supply side of governance to ensure that we have an equilibrium and a stable society running for us. It takes a whole lot of intellectual engagement and thinking to be able to unpack some of these things and begin to craft them.

That is why I said it’s not about contracting. It’s not about throwing money at it. It’s about a group of

Have you ever worked on the farmer-herder crisis to see how it can be resolved, and what, in your opinion, should be the best way out?

Yes, I think that as an individual researcher, I’ve worked in that space with a couple of publications on that issue. I will speak on some of my findings, as a scholar and all that, then I’ll move gradually to what the Institute has done.

As a scholar, the traditional farmer- herder crisis can be resolved, because, as we speak, even though there is a farmer- herder crisis in some of these places, the same farmer- herder co- exists, even if you go to the field today, you’ll see them. Do you understand what I’m saying? Wherein lies the problem? The problem lies in the criminalization.

It’s the criminalization of conflict in rural areas. Conflict can be prevented, mitigated, and managed. But when conflict is criminalised, it becomes difficult for you to use the tool of what I’m telling you about conflict resolution, management, and prevention. So, what you need to deploy there is more policing and security tools. Because criminals commercialise and profit from our identity fault lines.

So, they create a crisis, and then they say it’s farmer-herder. So, in most of these places, that has been what has been happening. And of course, the pressure also coming from the Sahel, the Sahelian region, the push in terms of the desertification, in terms of the climate change dynamics, that is putting pressure on livelihoods and populations in the Sahel, which is pushing them downward.

This is not only Nigeria. In Ghana, Cameroon, and some of these other places, in Togo, there is a push. There is a push from the Sahelian side.

The reason is that people must move when they cannot survive because of harsh weather conditions or whatever. So, the point we need to make now is how do we creatively receive those people coming down and integrate them peacefully into our society, which is what we’ve not really done. So, you are finding a forceful penetration into forested areas across Nigeria, and then the struggle over land and water use in those local communities.

That is one component of the farmer-herder crisis, which our research points to. A new dynamic, which of course about two months of my visit to a location around the Benue Valley clearly shows, is the activities of illicit miners that have currently also changed the dynamics. And how do they change that dynamic? All they do is once they see that there is a mining prospect in a particular local community, they come with herds of cattle in a truck or whatever and empty them down, and lead them into those communities.

And then they destroy their farm crops and all that, and then there is a seeming farmer-herder crisis and all that. So that is another dimension. It’s also instructive to note that the Nigerian government has not slept over this issue of farmer-herder crisis.

So, there is a need for broader consultation, more engagement with the people, to have a buy-in of the people. This is because the farmers need the herders, the herders need the farmers. Because the waste product from the herds of cows to a very large extent helps in manure, fertilising the soils for these farmers.

But where we don’t have a systematic approach for engaging it, you’ll find this struggle and then this use of force, and then the recent activities of illicit miners as well, to take over their territories, mine the place illicitly and go. So, we need a more holistic approach on the side of the federal government, state government, local government, traditional rulers, and community-based organisations to try to mitigate some of these things. We’re working in partnership with some other partners like NIM Foundation, for example, on a broader farmer- herder conference.

I think some members of our team are already out there. So, we’re doing this in what I call a combo, a cocktail of all these activities with very minimal resources that we can, and that is why our funding stream also is a bit small. We’re trying to see how we can partner with the private sector group and with media organisations to see how this new level of investors in this space, in this peace space, can make a world of difference and ensure some good level of transparency and accountability in the spending of funding and then in the delivery of some of these strategic issues that I’ve just mentioned.

Because if we don’t go that route to ensure that we address the many plethora of lack of funds, we might just be going in cycles.