Adekola OJERINDE

For years, Nigeria has tried to build peace from the top down. Committees are formed, panels are inaugurated, and national plans are launched in Abuja with the hope that their effects will somehow trickle down to the villages, towns, and urban communities where real people live. Yet, the peace we desire continues to slip away, not because our ambitions are wrong, but because our approach often ignores the place where conflict is born and where peace must take root: the grassroots.

Every conflict we see on the news, whether farmer–herder clashes, political violence, communal disputes, kidnapping, or urban crime, begins in a local context before it becomes a national statistic. And every resolution that truly lasts also begins in those same spaces: marketplaces, farmlands, town halls, worship centres, community gatherings, and neighbourhoods where ordinary people interact daily.

Last year, during a community dialogue in an agrarian area of Oyo State, I watched farmers and herders who had once viewed each other as enemies sit side by side, mapping out grazing routes, discussing water sources, and agreeing on early-warning systems. Nothing about that moment was dramatic, but it was powerful. It reminded me that peacebuilding is not an event. It is a culture of engagement, and that culture must live in communities, not conference halls.

Nigeria’s national institutions are important, no doubt. But peace cannot be legislated into existence. You cannot decree trust. You cannot issue a memo on mutual respect. You cannot pass a policy that automatically repairs broken relationships or heals long-standing grievances. These things require human presence, patience, and dialogue, the kind that can only happen when people meet one another as neighbours, not adversaries.

When Abuja designs policies without listening deeply to rural communities, urban youth, women groups, religious leaders, farmers, artisanal workers, or persons with disabilities, it creates solutions that may look perfect on paper but fail in practice. National peace is not simply about security operations or political statements. It is about ensuring that every community feels seen, heard, valued, and protected.

This is why local peace structures such as traditional institutions, faith communities, civil society organisations, youth networks, women mediators, and community-based associations are crucial. These groups understand the nuances of their environment. They can detect tension before it explodes. They know which histories matter, which families are involved, and which steps can calm a situation. They are the first respondents of peace; Abuja is the last.

Peace building happens when someone sits in the sun with rural dwellers to discuss land use, when mediators walk boundary lines with disputing groups, when a young person is empowered with skills instead of weapons, and when a community learns how to resolve disputes without violence. These are small acts, but they accumulate into the kind of stability Abuja alone cannot produce.

Nigeria’s future depends on whether we can build a peace that ordinary people can feel. A peace that means farmers can return home safely at dusk. A peace that means young men does not see crime as their only opportunity. A peace that means women do not fear walking to the market. A peace that means children can grow without witnessing violence as a normal part of life.

National peacebuilding will always matter. Security agencies, government policies, and state institutions all have roles to play. But if Abuja is the head of the system, local communities are the heartbeat. And a nation without a healthy heartbeat cannot survive.

Real peace begins the moment a community chooses dialogue over revenge, cooperation over fear, and understanding over suspicion. That is where the Nigeria we dream of will be born, not in the corridors of power, but in the everyday places where Nigerians meet, live, work, disagree, and reconcile.

If we want a peaceful Nigeria, we must start where peace becomes real: in our communities.