Nigeria recorded no fewer than 279 kidnapping cases across the country in May 2026, according to fresh data from Nextier’s Nigeria Violent Conflicts Database, highlighting a continued deterioration in national security conditions.
The report also showed that 156 violent incidents were documented within the same period, leading to 842 fatalities nationwide.
Compared to May 2025, the figures reflect a significant escalation in insecurity, with violent incidents rising by 51.5 percent, deaths increasing by 90.1 percent, and kidnapping cases climbing by 19.7 percent.
Security analysts linked to Nextier attributed the worsening situation to gaps in peacebuilding efforts and weak evaluation systems that fail to properly measure the impact of interventions across conflict-affected regions.
In a policy paper titled “The Travails of Measuring Peacebuilding in Fragile Contexts,” researchers Jamilu Musa and Dr. Chukwuma Okoli warned that many peace initiatives in Nigeria are not producing clearly measurable outcomes.
According to them, “peacebuilding goes beyond organising dialogue sessions and sensitisation programmes; the real measure lies in whether communities are safer, more resilient, and more cohesive over time.”
They further noted that shrinking global funding for peacebuilding projects has made impact assessment even more urgent, especially as donor attention shifts toward global crises such as the Russia–Ukraine war and tensions in the Middle East.
The experts also pointed to changing global economic priorities, including protectionist policies in some major economies, as factors affecting financial support for peace initiatives in countries like Nigeria.
Despite growing investment in peacebuilding programmes, the researchers argued that measuring success remains difficult because key indicators—such as trust, resilience, and perceptions of safety—are often intangible.
They identified several core indicators that should guide evaluation efforts, including conflict trends, social cohesion, governance and inclusion, and community resilience.
Explaining further, they said, “conflict dynamics help track patterns such as kidnappings and communal clashes, while social cohesion measures trust and cooperation among citizens.”
They added that governance indicators focus on citizens’ confidence in institutions and participation of vulnerable groups, while resilience measures the ability of communities to prevent conflicts from escalating.
However, the analysts stressed that several obstacles continue to hinder accurate assessment of peacebuilding efforts, including weak baseline data, security challenges in conflict zones, and the difficulty of attributing outcomes to specific interventions.
They also highlighted issues such as short donor funding cycles, rapidly evolving conflict situations, and the challenge of quantifying non-physical outcomes like trust and social stability.
“Peace is not a fixed condition but an ongoing process that involves reducing violence while strengthening development outcomes,” the researchers stated.
To improve effectiveness, they recommended the use of modern evaluation approaches such as outcome harvesting, perception surveys, conflict-sensitive monitoring, and participatory assessment methods.
They also urged governments at federal and state levels to adopt standardised frameworks for measuring peace, while encouraging stronger collaboration among security agencies, humanitarian organisations, and development partners.
The report concluded that focusing solely on the number of activities carried out is insufficient, stressing that the key question should be whether peacebuilding efforts are genuinely making communities safer and more resilient in Nigeria’s volatile security environment.
