By Jamilu Musa & Chukwuma Okoli
Nigeria’s security landscape continues to be shaped by rising violent extremism, banditry, kidnapping, farmer-herder conflicts and communal violence, all of which undermine peace and stability. Data from Nextier’s Nigeria Violent Conflicts Database (NNVCD) showed that in May 2026, Nigeria recorded 842 casualties and 279 kidnap victims in 156 violent incidents across the country. Compared to May 2025, recorded violent incidents increased by 51.5 per cent while the number of casualties and kidnap victims spiked by 90.1 per cent and 19.7 per cent respectively (see figure 1). In response to the growing insecurity, the Nigerian government, development partners, and local communities are investing heavily in peacebuilding initiatives to counter these growing trends of violent conflict.
The concept of peacebuilding was popularised by Boutros-Ghali, former United Nations Secretary General, in 1992 when he announced An Agenda for Peace and defined peacebuilding as: “action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict.” This conceptualisation and popularisation of peacebuilding contribute to the growth of peacebuilding interventions in conflict-affected societiesacross the world. The necessity of peacebuilding interventions in the face of recent shrink in funding from development partners means that available funds must be properly utilised to ensure value for money and maximum impact. Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) is a veritable strategy for ensuring value for money and impact of existing and future peacebuilding interventions. Yet, unlike traditional development projects, evaluating the outcome and impact of peacebuildinginterventions requires more complex methodologies to capture delicate indicators such as trust, social cohesion, fragility, resilience, etc. This is because many outcomes of peacebuilding interventions are less visible and require more than counting activities or beneficiaries. Moreover, peacebuilding itself is a dynamic and long-term activity implemented both as a pre-conflict and post-conflict intervention. Hence, evaluating peacebuilding interventions requires a robust MEL methodology that can properly capture the dynamism and fluidity of conflict and indicators of peacebuilding in a complex security environment like Nigeria.
Further, emerging challenges such as climate change, misinformation, youth exclusion, and economic hardship further complicate peacebuilding efforts and underscore the need for evidence-based decision-making in peacebuilding interventions.How do we measure the effectiveness of interventions by various stakeholders? How do we ensure that the MEL designed for peacebuilding interventions reveals lessons learned from various peacebuilding interventions in fragile contexts like Nigeria? This Nextier SPD Policy article explores the challenges of measuring peacebuilding in the face of shrinking global funding ]and foregrounds the need for a robust MEL tailored for peacebuilding interventions in fragile contexts such as Nigeria.
Why Measurement Matters in Peacebuilding
Funding support from development partners for peacebuilding interventions is being challenged. The war in Iran and the protracted war in Ukraine means that there is competing demands for existing funds at the disposal of development partners. What is more. The Trump’s economic nationalism has also seen withdrawal of various supports for peacebuilding interventions in Nigeria. In the context of paucity of fund despite increasing security challenges in Nigeria MEL becomes essential for ensuring existing and future funds are properly utilised. Thus, measuring peacebuilding outcomes is essential for understanding whether interventions are contributing to meaningful and sustainable change. With multiple conflict drivers, such as poverty, unemployment, weak governance, climate pressures and shocks, identity-based grievances, and insecurity, simply implementing activities is not enough. Peacebuilding actors need evidence to determine whether their interventions are reducing tensions, strengthening resilience, and fostering more peaceful communities.
Through robust MEL designed for peacebuilding interventions, critical peacebuilding stakeholders are able to identify the unique character of indicators to be measured, assess whether peacebuilding interventions are leading to positive changes in conflict dynamics and social relations. For instance, a farmer-herder dialogue programme in North Central Nigeria may successfully bring stakeholders together through a series of meetings and mediation sessions. However, the true measure of success lies in whether these engagements result in reduced violent clashes, improved cooperation over natural resources, and stronger mechanisms for resolving disputes peacefully. A robust MEL tailored to capture the peacebuilding dynamics helps shift the focus from activities and outputs to the outcomes and impacts that matter for sustainable peace.
More so, MEL is critical for accountability and informed decision-making. Governments, donors, implementing partners, and communities increasingly require evidence that resources invested in peacebuilding initiatives are generating tangible benefits. In a period of constrained funding and growing security challenges, demonstrating effectiveness and value for money has become increasingly important. Robust MEL systems provide credible evidence that interventions are contributing to positive change and help justify continued investment in peacebuilding efforts.
Beyond accountability, MEL serves as a vital tool for learning and adaptation. Nigeria’s conflict landscape is constantly changing, with emerging indicators, drivers and threats such as climate-induced resource conflicts, kidnapping-for-ransom, violent extremism, and the spread of misinformation creating new challenges. Through continuous monitoring and reflection, peacebuilding actors can identify shifts in conflict dynamics and adjust their strategies accordingly. This ensures that interventions remain relevant and responsive to local realities. For example, youth engagement programmes designed to reduce vulnerability to recruitment by criminal or extremist groups may report the number of young people trained or supported. However, a robust peacebuilding tailored MEL helps determine whether these initiatives are actually leading to improved livelihoods, increased civic participation, and reduced susceptibility to violence. Such evidence enables practitioners to refine programme approaches and invest in strategies that produce meaningful outcomes.
Effective measurement also helps identify successful interventions that can be replicated or scaled while highlighting unintended consequences that may undermine peacebuilding objectives. By generating evidence on what works, what does not, and why, MELenables practitioners to design more effective, conflict-sensitive, and sustainable interventions.
Ultimately, MEL is not merely a reporting requirement. It is a strategic tool that enables peacebuilding actors to learn, adapt, demonstrate impact, and contribute more effectively to peace, resilience, and social stability in Nigeria.
What Peacebuilding Indicators Should be Measured in Fragile Contexts
Measuring peacebuilding requires a multidimensional approach because it is more than the mere absence of violence. In conflict-affected settings like Nigeria, an MEL designed for peacebuilding would be fit-for-purpose if it measures and adequately captures four critical indicators. First is conflict dynamics: This focuses oncapturing the shifting nature of violence and insecurity, such as banditry, farmer-herder clashes, kidnapping, and communal violence. A sound peacebuilding MEL should expose the changing incentives, influence and strategies of conflict actors. It also considers changes in objective and subjective security among people. A second indicator that peacebuilding-specific MEL must capture is social cohesion. This measures the strength of relationships within and between groups, including levels of trust, cooperation, and interaction among different communities. Stronger cohesion helps reduce tensions and improve peaceful coexistence.Thirdly, a peacebuilding-specific MEL should adequately measure Governance and Inclusion. This captures trust in institutions, participation in decision-making, and the inclusion of vulnerable groups, women, youth, and marginalised groups. The fourth important indicator expected in a MEL designed for peacebuilding is Resilience and Conflict Prevention, which assesses how well communities can prevent and manage conflict before it escalates, including the effectiveness of peace structures, early warning systems, and coping mechanisms for shocks like displacement or climate stress.
The Travails of Measuring Peacebuilding Outcomes and Impacts
While monitoring and evaluation are essential for assessing peacebuilding interventions, measuring peacebuilding remains challenging because peace itself is not static. It is a work in progress involving simultaneously increasing development and reducing conflict (see Ibeanu, 2006). The outcome of peacebuildinginvolves complex social, political, and behavioral changes that are influenced by multiple factors and often occur over long periods. In view of this, any MEL designed for peacebuilding interventions must be conscious of six key risks which must be mitigated to ensure the utility of the MEL. The first risk to mitigate is the risk of attribution bias. Peacebuilding programmes rarely operate in isolation, making it difficult to determine whether an intervention directly caused a change. There is also the risk associated with the long-term nature of Peacebuilding Outcomes. Outcomes such as trust, social cohesion, and confidence in institutions take time to develop. However, many projects operate within short funding cycles, making it difficult to capture long-term impacts and often requiring the measurement of interim results. Again, there is the risk associated with ignoring the changing conflict contexts.Conflict dynamics are constantly evolving, making measurement more complex. A fourth risk is the difficulty of measuring intangible concepts. Many peacebuilding outcomes—including trust, resilience, social cohesion, and perceptions of security—cannot be directly observed or quantified. Measuring these changes often requires a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods.Paucity of baseline data in fragile settings also constitutes a risk to contend with. Many conflict-affected communities lack reliable baseline information, making it difficult to determine the extent of change achieved during programme implementation. Finally, there is a risk associated with Security Constraints Affecting Data Collection in Fragile Contexts.
Emerging Approaches and Tools in Peacebuilding M&E
As peacebuilding practitioners increasingly recognise the limitations of traditional monitoring and evaluation approaches, there is growing use of methods that better capture the complex and often unpredictable nature of peacebuilding outcomes. These approaches help generate deeper insights into changes in relationships, perceptions, behaviors, and conflict dynamics. As Nigeria’s peace and security challenges become increasingly complex, the methods used to measure peace must also evolve. Emerging approaches such as Outcome Harvesting, Most Significant Change, Conflict Sensitivity Monitoring, Perception Surveys, Social Network Analysis, Participatory M&E, and mixed-methods evaluations enable practitioners to generate stronger evidence, support learning, and better understand how interventions contribute to sustainable peace and social cohesion.
Implications for Policy and Practice
The importance of measuring peace goes beyond accountability; it directly shapes how peacebuilding and development interventions are designed, implemented, and adapted in fragile and conflict-affected settings. In Nigeria, where security challenges are diverse and evolving, evidence generated through peacebuilding-tailoredMEL is essential for ensuring that interventions remain effective, conflict-sensitive, and responsive to changing realities.
Evidence-informed peacebuilding can strengthen community security initiatives, improve responses to farmer-herder conflicts, enhance youth engagement programmes, support social cohesion in displacement-affected communities, and strengthen governance and civic participation. Beyond demonstrating results, robust measurement systems enable policymakers and practitioners to identify successful approaches, address emerging risks, and allocate resources more effectively.
As peacebuilding challenges become increasingly complex, governments, development partners, and implementing organisations must invest not only in interventions but also in the systems that generate evidence on what works, what does not, and why. Strengthening peace measurement is therefore critical to building more resilient communities and achieving sustainable peace.
Recommendations
- Federal and state governments should institutionalise peace measurement within national and sub-national peacebuilding agencies/frameworks. Standardised indicators on social cohesion, trust, inclusion, resilience, and perceptions of security should complement conventional security metrics to provide a more comprehensive understanding of peace outcomes and inform policy decisions.
- Governments, donors, and development partners should invest in robust peacebuilding MEL systems. This should include baseline studies, longitudinal data collection, and mixed-methods approaches that adapt qualitative tools such as Outcome Harvesting, Most Significant Change, and perception surveys to generate stronger evidence on peacebuilding outcomes.
- Peacebuilding programmes should adopt adaptive management approaches that use evidence for continuous learning and programme improvement. Regular analysis of monitoring data, community feedback, and conflict trends should guide timely adjustments to interventions, ensuring they remain relevant and responsive to evolving conflict dynamics.
- Federal and state authorities, development partners, and peacebuilding actors should strengthen coordination and evidence-sharing mechanisms. Improved collaboration among security, humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding stakeholders can support more coherent responses to conflict drivers, reduce duplication of effort, and ensure that evidence informs policy, programming, and resource allocation.
Moving Beyond Counting Activities
Nigeria faces complex and interconnected peace and security challenges, including violent extremism, communal conflicts, farmer-herder tensions, displacement, youth unemployment, and climate-related insecurity. Over the years, enormous resources have been deployed for peacebuilding across the country. However, recent shrinking in funding means that urgent actions must be taken to ensure existing and future funds properly utilised to ensure value for money and maximum impact. In this context, evidence-driven peacebuilding is essential for ensuring that interventions are effective and responsive to local realities. While activities such as trainings, dialogue sessions, and awareness campaigns are important, they are not sufficient measures of success on their own. The key issue is whether these interventions lead to stronger social cohesion, increased trust in institutions, improved community resilience, and more inclusive participation by women, youth, and other vulnerable groups. Robust peacebuilding-tailored MELsystems play a critical role in generating evidence on what works, what does not, and why. This evidence supports accountability, learning, adaptation, and improved programme design while helping practitioners respond to changing conflict dynamics.
(Jamilu Musa is a development practitioner and research professional at Nextier; while Dr. Chukwuma Okoli is a visiting Lead, Research and Policy at Nextier and a Lecturer at the Political Science Department at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria)
