Looking at the impact of Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast Nigeria, the need to build the resilient and strengthen the people capacity within the localities is paramount so as to avert the impact and tendencies of other youth and individuals joining Bad Group in the Future.

The North East connection project titled “Promoting Civic Participation for Community Peacebuilding forums” in Biu and Jere LGA” with a goal to improve resilience of communities through community-based dialogue platforms for honest conversations that build social cohesion and mitigate grievances that make communities vulnerable to violent extremist infiltration and to strengthened opportunities for increased community participation through open government dialogues to foster peaceful co-existence within and with other neighboring communities and to sort alternative ways to address grievances involving community members to avert tension, conflict and violence within and with other communities.

Center for Advocacy Transparency and Accountability Initiative (CATAI), commenced the project in August 2021 and was closed out in March 2022 where the project directly reached members of communities that were selected through community mapping at grassroot levels and key stakeholders such as; political office holders, government officials, traditional rulers, youth groups, women groups, PLWD, community members and informal security bodies, by engaging the targeted communities and stakeholders through capacity building, community dialogue sessions, and town hall meetings. The project proved to enhance the knowledge and understanding of stakeholders and project beneficiaries across target communities of Biu and Jere LGAs of Borno state. 

At the end of the project, in line with the project’s goal which aims to provide target communities with platform for peace and promote social cohesion, CATAI has supported the establishment and capacity strengthening of 100 stakeholders across target communities in Biu and Jere LGAs – while working to address emerging threats/issues affecting the communities. For example, six community peace governance platform were formed in Dalaram community, Old Maiduguri Community, El-yakub community in Old Maiduguri Wards while Filin Jirgi community Kingal and Tashan Dan-fulani communities in Yawi ward   in Biu and Jere LGAs respectively.