Nigerian Women Help Youths Escape Gang Violence

Maiduguri, Nigeria – Mohammed Abdulhamid raises his maimed hand to greet passers-by outside his home in Ajilari, a peripheral neighborhood of Maiduguri in northeastern Nigeria.

The gesture is clumsy. Most of the fingers on his right hand were severed in a gang attack in 2023, a constant reminder of a life he says was wrecked by violence.

He no longer remembers his exact age. But he clearly recalls that evening. "The gang attacked me in revenge, and just as the wind scatters leaves, I can't remember how many people I had attacked before that night," Mohammed told Al Jazeera.

Unable to return to his carpentry job, Mohammed now spends his days preventing teenagers from repeating his mistakes. "Having understood the consequences, I make sure our children stay away from conflict, because once involved, it's very hard to escape," he said.

For years, youth gangs known as "Marlians" have terrorized neighborhoods across Maiduguri and nearby Jere. Armed with knives, axes, machetes, and makeshift weapons, rival groups fight over turf, leaving residents caught between fear and retaliation.

Violence escalated to the point that in 2023, Borno State Governor Babagana Umara Zulum ordered a widespread crackdown on gangs after a series of deadly clashes. As groups grew bolder, residents accused members of using commercial tricycles to snatch phones, ambush passengers, and carry out robberies across the city.

But in communities already shaped by more than a decade of conflict and displacement, an unusual peace effort has taken shape. Instead of relying solely on arrests and security crackdowns, local women, community leaders, and former gang members are seeking to persuade youths to abandon violence.

Analysts and community leaders say the violence stems from deeper wounds left by years of war. Borno is the cradle of the Boko Haram insurgency, which has ravaged northeastern Nigeria for more than a decade. The United Nations estimates the conflict has killed more than 35,000 people and displaced over two million across the Lake Chad region.

"We see young people deeply involved in illegal drugs and petty crime, then it develops into full-scale gangsterism," explained Hassana Ibrahim Waziri, executive director of the United Women for the Advancement of Women (UMWA). "They grow up in a violent environment simply because they witnessed it happening constantly from a very young age."

Winning Over the Gangs

The breakthrough, according to community leaders, came when they stopped regarding gang members as merely a security problem. From 2018 to 2021, UMWA, with support from Conciliation Resources, began organizing regular dialogue sessions with gang leaders in 10 volatile communities.

"We held biweekly conversations with them, making them understand that they could do better things for a sustainable future," Waziri said. Instead of focusing on punishment, organizers sought to persuade influential gang leaders that they could become peace advocates in their own neighborhoods.

While security forces went after them, women in some of Maiduguri's most dangerous neighborhoods began tackling a harder challenge: changing mindsets. Grassroots groups like the Ajilari Cross Development Association and Gomari Development Association expanded dialogue efforts through community mediation, persuading rival gangs to resolve disputes before they turned deadly.

"Formerly feared gang members have renounced violence," said Bulama Babangida, a community leader overseeing the initiative in Ajilari. "We have trained local women, who now organize weekly peace-awareness programs on Sundays for these gangs and work with state security forces to settle disputes before they escalate."

Fatima Tahir, a women's leader with the Gomari Development Association, said the initiative initially faced resistance from men in the community. But attitudes shifted as residents saw how women could help defuse tensions that often led to bloodshed. "I was assigned to mobilize women, train them, and care for young people to ensure peace across Gomari and Bulunkutu. I also placed female representatives in different neighborhoods to monitor dialogues between rival gangs," Tahir told Al Jazeera.

Community leaders estimate that more than 1,000 gang members have joined dialogue groups, though the figure is not independently verified. Some women work quietly behind the scenes, tracking emerging disputes, monitoring areas linked to drug use, and passing information to community leaders, police, military, and the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) before tensions turn violent.

Rejecting Violence

Mohammed is one of those who changed. The dialogue sessions forced him to confront the pain that gang violence caused families, including his own. As his reputation shifted from a feared fighter to a peace advocate, other young people chose him to lead a group of former gang members who had formally renounced violence. He says many have stopped fighting after learning the benefits of peace and developing new respect for community elders.

Ma'aji Abba, 27, a former gang member from Gomari, believes outsiders often misunderstand why youths join gangs. "Many say we joined gangs because of unemployment, but for me, that is not the root cause," Abba explained to Al Jazeera a few weeks after being released from prison in May. "The problem runs deep in the environment where we grew up. When you grow up where the community is in constant conflict, you naturally join the fight, even if you don't know why people are fighting."

Now trying to rebuild their lives, both face uncertain futures. Abba hopes to raise enough money to start a clothing business. Mohammed, meanwhile, struggles with permanent hand injuries that ended his carpentry career and continue to limit his ability to earn a living.

A Fragile Peace

Yet gains remain fragile. Some former gang members told Al Jazeera that renouncing violence has not brought much protection from old enemies. Some said they still face threats from rival neighborhoods seeking revenge for past attacks. Without a formal reintegration framework, community leaders fear some former gang members could slide back into violence.

Meanwhile, shrinking funding is straining many reconciliation initiatives. In some cases, organizers said they had to pay out of their own pockets to cover meetings and outreach efforts. Peace builders like Waziri believe repairing the damage from years of conflict demands patience and persistence. "If a person has peace in their soul, they can spread it across the community," she said. "That is why we must help these young people create their own peace, so that the whole society can benefit from it."