Contesting localisation in interfaith peacebuilding in Northern Nigeria

Amidst a ‘local turn’ in peacebuilding, donors have seized on the idea of ‘localising’ peacebuilding programmes. Donors have sought to include actors who have local knowledge and connections in order to make interventions more context-sensitive. Yet programmes premised on the fractiousness of Muslim-Christian relations, as many in northern Nigeria are, are inevitably absorbed into over-arching narratives of global civilisational encounter. How does the local turn play out in this context of heightened international sensitivities? Drawing on the critical peacebuilding literature, this article analyses the origins of USAID’s push to localise its interfaith peace-building efforts in northern Nigeria, and the ambivalence of categorises like ‘local’ and ‘international’ in its subsequent partnership with the Kaduna-based Interfaith Mediation Centre on the TOLERANCE programme. While the categories of local and international are indeed contested and fluid, there are limits to how far local partners can successfully leverage these ideas in the context of unequal power relations.