How women steer youths away from gang violence in northeastern Nigeria
Maiduguri, Nigeria – Mohammed Abdulhamid raises what remains of his fingers to greet passers-by outside his home in Ajilari, a neighbourhood on the edge of
Maiduguri, Nigeria – Mohammed Abdulhamid raises what remains of his fingers to greet passers-by outside his home in Ajilari, a neighbourhood on the edge of Maiduguri in northeastern Nigeria. The gesture is awkward. Most of the fingers on his right hand were mutilated during a gang attack in 2023, a permanent reminder of a life he says was consumed by violence. He no longer remembers his age. But he remembers that evening. “The gang that attacked me were taking revenge, and just like how the breeze blows every tree leaf, I can’t remember how many people I have also attacked before that evening,” Mohammed told Al Jazeera. Unable to return to his work as a contract carpenter, Mohammed now spends his days trying to stop teenagers from making the same choices he did. “Having understood the consequences, I now ensure our younger ones stay away from fighting because it’s difficult to leave once you get into it,” he says. For years, youth gangs known locally as “Marlians” have terrorised neighbourhoods across Maiduguri and neighbouring Jere. Armed with knives, axes, machetes and locally made weapons, rival groups fought over territory, leaving residents trapped between fear and retaliation. The violence escalated to the point that in 2023, Borno State Governor Babagana Umara Zulum ordered a widespread crackdown on the gangs after a series of deadly clashes. As the groups grew, residents accused members of using commercial tricycles to snatch phones, ambush passengers and carry out robberies across the city. But in communities shaped by more than a decade of conflict and displacement, an unlikely peace effort has emerged. Instead of relying solely on arrests and security crackdowns, local women, community leaders and former gang members are attempting to persuade young men to walk away from violence.
Analysts and community leaders trace the violence to deeper wounds left by years of war. Borno is the birthplace of the Boko Haram rebellion, which has ravaged northeastern Nigeria for more than a decade. The United Nations estimates that the conflict has killed more than 35,000 people and displaced over two million throughout the Lake Chad region. “We see youth heavily involved in illicit drugs and petty crimes, which then mature into full-blown gangsterism,” explains Hassana Ibrahim Waziri, the Executive Director of Unified Members for Women Advancement (UMWA). “They have grown up in an environment of violence simply because they have seen it occur constantly since they were very young children.” Winning over the gangs The breakthrough, community leaders say, came when they stopped treating gang members solely as a security problem. From 2018 to 2021, UMWA, with support from Conciliation Resources, began holding regular dialogue sessions with gang leaders in 10 volatile communities. “We held bi-weekly conversations with them, making them understand they could do better things to have a sustainable future,” says Waziri. Rather than focusing on punishment, organisers sought to convince influential gang leaders that they could become advocates for peace inside their own neighbourhoods. While security forces pursued arrests, women in some of Maiduguri’s most volatile neighbourhoods began tackling a harder challenge: changing minds. Grassroots groups including the Ajilari Cross Development Association and the Gomari Development Association expanded the dialogue effort through community mediation, persuading rival gangs to settle disputes before they turned deadly. “Once-feared gang members have retired from violence,” says Bulama Babangida, a community leader overseeing the initiative in Ajilari. “We have trained local women who now run weekly peace awareness programmes on Sundays for these gangs and collaborate with state security actors to handle disputes before they become fatal.” Fatima Tahir, a women’s leader with the Gomari Development Association, said the initiative initially faced resistance from men in the community.
The BriefWire