WOMEN IN CONFLICT MANAGEMENT IN NIGERIA: THE EXPERIENCE OF BAYELSA STATE, 1999–2025

Abstract

This study examined the roles, strategies, constraints, and achievements of women in conflict management in Bayelsa State, from 1999 to 2025. Bayelsa State constitutes a particularly instructive case study because it sits at the intersection of multiple overlapping conflict systems: oil-related environmental and resource conflicts, inter-communal violence, armed militancy and its aftermath, and the structural violence of poverty and underdevelopment endemic to the Niger Delta. Drawing on data derived from secondary and interdisciplinary sources, and adopting the use of the feminist peace studies, gender and conflict theory, as templates for analysis, this study argued that women in Bayelsa State have been far more than passive victims of these conflicts. Through traditional protest forms, community mediation institutions, civil society organising, formal political participation, and engagement with national and international peace frameworks, Bayelsa women have constituted a persistent, if frequently marginalised, force for conflict transformation. The study further argued that the persistent gap between normative commitments, embedded in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, the Maputo Protocol, and Nigeria's National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, and actual practice in Bayelsa reflects deep structural impediments rooted in patriarchal governance, the political economy of oil, elite capture of peace processes, and the chronic underfunding of women's civil society organisations. The conclusion draws lessons from the Bayelsa experience for gender-responsive conflict management policy in Nigeria.