Nigeria
Envisioning Glavda communities storytelling and art for peacebuilding, justice, and healing.
Project Introduction
The Nigeria team is led by Dr Abubakar Umar Kari at the University of Abuja and Tominke Olaniyan from PADEAP (The Pan African Development Education and Advocacy Programme). The project in Nigeria is working in IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps in Nigeria and the research takes a holistic and long-term approach, to fully understand the lives of those affected by conflict and to ensure their well-being both whilst sharing their stories and experiences with the team, and beyond.
Nigerian Context
Nigeria currently has the 3rd largest number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Africa, with 3.3million displaced from their homes but living in their country borders. In Nigeria internal displacement is due to overlapping and intersecting problems including protracted violence and climate change. Boko Haram and other non-state armed groups, alongside clashes between herders and farmers have pushed Nigerians out of their homes, especially from parts of North-East Nigeria and the country’s Middle Belt, but increasingly also in North-West Nigeria.
DEPA Nigeria is conducting its decolonial participatory action-based research project in Abuja, Nigeria. In Abuja, there are several camps for Internally Displaced Persons from Borno and Adamawa states who have been displaced by the Boko Haram insurgencies. The IDP camps vary from barely habitable cluster of tents made of tarpaulin, zinc, and fabric, to partially completed buildings. The traumatised and vulnerable IDP’s lack basic amenities, including water, adequate healthcare, and education.
Our arts-based methods include storytelling/ oral histories and photovoice alongside working with Nigerian artists for justice and peace, seeks to collaborate and support IDPs in New Kuchingoro, Wassa and Malaysia Gardens, the three camps have a population of over 7,500 IDPs. The displaced people living in the camps speak several Nigerian minority languages. The languages include Glavda, Gudof, Gava, Chinene, Zalidva, Chikide, Mafa and Mandara. The main language spoken in New Kuchingoro, especially by the elders in the community is the Glavda language. Glavda is a minority Afro-Asiatic language spoken by approximately 60,000 people from Borno State, Northeast Nigeria, and Northern Cameroon. It is recognised as one of the languages that is disappearing. The notion of peace is being investigated through specific thematic areas identified by the IDP communities and participants.
Project Methodology
Storytelling/Oral Histories - for healing, cultural survival, and change.
The storytelling/ oral histories, music, and dance sessions with the Glavda-speaking elders in New Kuchingoro create space for elders to come together and share the stories they want to keep alive. In the safe space created, they share their values and knowledge of community cohesion, conflict resolution and peacebuilding, which is usually conveyed from one generation to the next through storytelling, music, and dance. The elders then participate in the transformation of these stories into educational materials working with teachers in newly created peace clubs in schools within FCT Abuja. The displaced youth and children, most of whom were either born in displacement camps, have little or no knowledge of their language and cultural identity. Given the severance from their traditional homes, there was a risk of cultural severance, which further compounded the trauma of physical displacement and violence. These oral histories were recorded in Glavda and then transcribed into Glavda and English. The elders are aged between 50 and 80. Selection was based on age and willingness to participate in the project.
Photovoice: Towards a Decolonial Photovoice: Psychosocial and mental health support for peacebuilding with IDP communities
Working with IDPs (internally displaced persons) and specifically women’s groups who have highlighted the effect of displacement on their mental health and access to primary healthcare. Our approach acknowledges the legacies of colonialism, the impact of conflict and health equity in Nigeria and research systems working with vulnerable communities.
Decolonial participatory action research: Research that is conducted in and with community, not on communities (Tuck & Guishard, 2013)
In Nigeria the decolonial agenda has been to contest and explore ways of working in research partnerships and with vulnerable communities. How might the dynamics of relationships and roles between researcher and researched be rethought and reconfigured? In Nigeria, the NGO partner is leading aspects of the research design and implementation and has hired a displaced Glavda speaker as a research assistant from the local government area where the majority of IDPs are from. This approach has helped to address the question of equity within partnerships by addressing power asymmetries. Cross-language research and writing is essential to ensure more voices are heard.
Social economic and political transformation
The work in Nigeria continues to yield insights that illuminate the deep connection between place and tradition, and how physical displacement compounds trauma by isolating successive generations from language, cultural memory and belonging. The physical challenges of the IDP camps compound the trauma that many of the displaced experience. Not only did they find themselves in unfamiliar surroundings, but the lack of facilities and the poverty of residents meant that the daily struggle of living added an extra layer of hardship, on top of experiences of violence and loss.
Through the DEPA project, we provide participants with a safe place to meet every week offering health education and counselling support with our designated health worker. We have also supported the elders in New Kuchingoro with economic empowerment loans to ensure they can continue and start small enterprises within the camp environment, building their confidence and independence. Out of these ongoing sessions, the elders began to share stories and memories and expressed a wish to preserve and share their knowledge and advocate for themselves to highlight the conditions they face. Translation work with marginalised, traumatised, and displaced populations requires linguistic skills, knowledge of the indigenous communities, knowledge of the conflict and its effects and decolonial participatory research skills to ensure the voices of the displaced and their stories are heard. However, as significantly, it refers to the uncanny and the untranslatable (Spivak 1992).
Educational Resources
DEPA aims to focus on educational resources used in informal training, including intergenerational peace club work and primary healthcare and mental health training. The resources will be developed and co-created through the research process and informed by the emerging data. This will ensure the resources are reflexively fed back to and informed by the participants, with the aim of the final materials being sensitised to and appropriate to the communities and context allowing them to be used more widely in Nigeria.
Impact
- Cultural and linguistic sustainability; A means of preserving Glavda language and the values and knowledge systems of the Glavda community – Oral testimonies/ Songs.
- Psychosocial and mental health support for peacebuilding with IDP communities. Journal article/ Photo essay
- Toward Decolonizing Peace and Conflict Issues in Nigerian Sociology Curriculum. Journal article
- Peace education for justice and social transformation in Nigeria – Special Edition/ Book
- Displacement, and the value of intergenerational involvement in youth healing and education – Journal article
- Primary and mental healthcare support for IDP’s residing in 4 camps within FCT Abuja
- Implementation of peace clubs in schools in FCT Abuja: An opportunity to keep traditional values alive through contribution to peace clubs.
- Depopulating places: in search of challenging but possible futures – Journal article
Country Report
Each team has produced a 'Country Report', which summarises the local context, research approaches and methodologies, data analysis plans and dissemination.