Foreword
p. xiii-xiv
Texte intégral
1The challenge of managing violent conflicts in Nigeria has been complicated by the dearth of accurate and reliable data on the incidence and impact of violence. Conflict management institutions and actors do not have access to information on the number of incidents of violence, the number of deaths due to violence, and the amount of property lost as a result of violence. The result is that policy and practice on conflict management and peacebuilding are based on assumptions and speculations about such numbers. Consequently, it is a challenge to assess the impact of initiatives to prevent and manage violent conflict. This challenge was apparent to the designers of the Nigeria Stability and Reconciliation Programme (NSRP) as they sought to set baselines for the interventions considered useful for addressing violent conflicts in Nigeria. There was no national database that tracked, collated, and disseminated information on violent conflict in a systematic way. During the search for baseline data, the designers of the NSRP came across a promising initiative which tracked incidents of violent deaths in the country. However, the initiative was based in a Paris institute and initiated by the French Africanist and political scientist Marc-Antoine Perouse de Montclos. There were no indications that Nigerian actors and institutions were aware of the database or used its data for research and policy purposes.
2It was against this background that NSRP decided to support the development and domestication of the Nigeria Watch project. Funding for the project, which is an initiative of the UK Department for International Development, facilitated the transfer of the Nigeria Watch database to the University of Ibadan. As a result of NSRP support, the database is now domiciled in Nigeria and maintained by Nigerian researchers and data analysts. It has also correspondingly become more accessible to more Nigerians. The NSRP support to Nigeria Watch has also aimed to facilitate use of the data collated for research. Consequently, grants from NSRP have supported research which has used the Nigeria Watch database to explain different aspects of violent deaths in Nigeria. This book is the product of some of the grants awarded to young Nigerian scholars interested in the study of violence. It applies qualitative and quantitative data to explain the incidence and impact of violence. By combining qualitative and quantitative data for analysis, the chapters in the book provide well-grounded empirical bases for analysis and conclusions. The qualitative studies help us to understand the statistics by shedding more light on the facts behind the figures. We congratulate Dr. Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos and his colleagues at IFRA and Nigeria Watch for their work on this publication, and it is hoped that this book will serve as a catalyst for more systematic studies of violence in Nigeria.
Dr Ukoha Ukiwo
Nigeria Stability and Reconciliation Programme (NSRP)
Abuja
Auteur

Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Creative Commons - Attribution - Partage dans les Mêmes Conditions 4.0 International - CC BY-SA 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
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