Resilience from Below: Local Responses to Violent Extremism in Northern Nigeria

Northern Nigeria has been profoundly affected by Boko Haram’s violent insurgency, which has disrupted social cohesion and undermined local governance structures. While existing scholarship largely emphasises the structural and security dimensions of countering violent extremism (CVE), less attention has been paid to how communities themselves interpret and enact resilience in the face of such threats. This paper examines how resilience is understood and practised by local actors in response to violent extremism. Drawing on fieldwork in Northern Nigeria, it offers an empirically grounded account of how local actors mobilise trust-based mechanisms of messaging, monitoring, and mitigation to sustain social order, counter extremist narratives, and adapt to protracted insecurity. Across these mechanisms, trust, legitimacy, and social capital mediate the capacity of local actors to coordinate collective action and sustain community resilience. Departing from state-centric models of CVE, the paper foregrounds the agency of local actors who navigate the blurred boundaries between governance, religion, and security. By highlighting civilian agency, it critiques top-down approaches that treat resilience as a technical, one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, the study advances a nuanced understanding of resilience as a relational and social process enacted through the everyday practices of trusted actors. It contributes to debates on P/CVE and bottom-up peacebuilding by demonstrating that community resilience is not externally imposed but rooted in local knowledge, authority, and social trust—factors essential for fostering sustainable peace and security.