How peace deals differ from amnesty in preventing crisis

Every now and then, in a cycle that has no structured order, a familiar dread descends on various communities of Nigeria’s Middle Belt.

Inter and intra-ethnic hostilities. Reared cattle straying into small holder farmlands. Crops destroyed.

Accusations fly and tempers rise. Fists are raised and weapons, hidden away from the watchful eyes of security agencies are brought out. Mayhem is unleashed. And all too often, innocent lives, are lost and properties destroyed.

Soon condolences are offered by government officials and some relief materials sent. Before long, the next cycle begins and the same palliative measures taken.

After years of painstaking research works by various scholars and the Middle Belt Brain Trust (MBBT), a different mindset has evolved to approach the issues.

I’m convinced that peace deals that are negotiated, community-rooted, locally owned, and carefully sustained, offer the most durable path out of this cycle of violence.

When we began engagement with conflicting communities in various states of Nigeria’s Middle Belt, the dominant impulse on both sides was not dialogue — it was understanding the grievance roots.

Actors and victims, particularly farmers and herders, spoke of violated harvests and broken livelihoods; blocked migration routes and the death of cattle that represented an entire family’s wealth. Each side had legitimate pain. Each side had also, at some point, inflicted it.

What became clear with the crisis was that the violence was not random. It followed patterns of assumed grievances occasioned by acts of injustice by persons with authority — formal and informal.

The example of the intractable Bassa/Egburra crisis in Toto Local Government of Nasarawa State is instructive. Engagements with both communities pointed out clearly that certain institutionalised grievances were being exploited by members of both communities for filthy lucre.

However, engagements and dialogue with both parties began to reveal that each wanted to live in peace with the other, having become worn out by the circle of violence. Today, thanks to the grievance management and peace deal models, the two communities are back together in the local government and living in peace.

The peace deal model did not emerge from a conference room or a policy paper. It was shaped by listening — to community elders, traditional rulers, farmers, herders, women who had buried husbands, young men who had taken up arms in desperation, security agencies who seemed incapable to stopping the carnage.

There were facilitated conversations in which both actors and victims were treated not as adversaries to be separated, but as neighbours with shared interests in security and prosperity.

The resulting agreements are practical documents, developed and owned by the contending parties.

They defined the nature of the grievances. They set goals for peaceful conversations. They set timelines for the attainment of certain processes. They established joint community watch committees with representatives from all stakeholders.

In Plateau State, the work focussed majorly on the farmer/herder crisis and its attendant effects on women, children, grazing routes and economic activities. Using community leaders and gatekeepers, traditional/community leaders, youth and women groups who were both actors and victims of the crisis were identified.

Using the grievance management workshops and models, all parties were brought together in 2025 to sign various peace deals which provisos included a commitment to peace, co-existence and social harmony within the same economic space.

A common question that requires interrogation is whether the peace deals are simply another version of the controversial amnesty arrangements that certain state and local governments have struck with armed bandits in the larger Nigerian context. They are not — and the difference matters enormously.

Government deals with bandits are typically top-down, often transactional, and frequently secretive. They negotiate with armed actors, who have already demonstrated their preference for violence, and they risk rewarding that violence with political legitimacy or financial inducements. Communities are rarely at the table. Implementation is rarely monitored. And when the deals collapse — as they often do — the blame falls, not on government procedures but on the victims. Consequently, the violence returns worse than before.

MBBT’s model is fundamentally different. The signatories are not warlords — they are ordinary members of the same eco-space who live side by side, share markets, and whose children attend the same schools.

The participants are all actors and victims of a common senseless derangement. Agreements are built on mutual interest, not political concession.

They are publicly witnessed, community-validated, and locally monitored. When an agreement is violated, there is a known process for resolving the breach. There is no reward for violence — only a framework for preventing it.

One of the most encouraging developments from our engagement is the emergence of joint committees made up of actors and victims who now actively police the terms of their own agreements. These are not outsiders imposing order — they are community members with a stake in the outcome, meeting regularly, flagging potential flashpoints, and resolving minor disputes before they escalate.

For example, In Sopp Community of Riyom Local Government in Plateau State where farmer/herder conflicts were endemic, one of the agreements signed by them included a proviso for all parties not to resort to insults, use of provocative words and threats when aggrieved. All infractions are to be reported to designated community leaders who will then activate established conflict resolution mechanisms.

There is also something in the model we have developed which is more difficult to quantify but no less real: the restoration of social trust.

Conflicting parties who once refused to speak to each other now share information about potential security threats. This is a giant step in a region where mistrust has been weaponised for so long.

Ambassador Jimba PhD, is a member of the Middle Belt Brain Trust (MBBT)

It is important to highlight that peace deals work best where community leadership is strong and respected. In communities where traditional authority has been weakened — by urbanisation, by the influence of outside armed groups or beneficiaries of conflict and by generational distrust — the agreements are harder to sustain.

We learned from our interactions that gender must be more central to any peace deal. Women bear a disproportionate burden of conflicts — as survivors, as displaced persons, as those who rebuild shattered households. Yet they remain underrepresented at all levels of leadership/authority.

There is the need to continue to engage this category of stakeholders in all activities.

There is also the question of legal recognition. For peace deals to be truly enforceable there is a need for a stronger interface with state and judicial systems.

At present, the peace deals rests largely on social pressure and community goodwill — which is powerful but not always sufficient. A continuous interface with state and local authorities to formally recognise community peace agreements as legally binding instruments is necessary to prevent violations.

The peace deal model is not a silver bullet. But it is something more valuable: a proven, replicable, community-owned approach that is working where it has been tried. It deserves to be upscaled, funded, and institutionalised.

The Middle Belt has known so much violence for too long. Its people are not doomed to live this way. They have shown, community after community, agreement after agreement, that another future is possible. Our task — and Nigeria’s task — is to make sure that future is not abandoned.

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