Description
This paper examines how resilience is understood and enacted by local actors in response to violent extremism in Northern Nigeria. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, it demonstrates that resilience is conceived not merely as a reaction to violence, but as a proactive moral and social project grounded in amāna (trust) and ibāda (service to God). Traditional and religious leaders engaged in peacebuilding understand their authority as moral rather than coercive, rooted in social legitimacy, historical memory, and everyday practices of preaching, education, and moral guidance. Their counter-narratives resonate not simply because they reject extremist ideology, but because they align with lived realities, communal values, and the socio-economic interdependence of community life. By conceptualising resilience as a relational and performative practice, the paper shows how moral authority functions as a form of local agency within hybrid governance contexts. It critiques top-down approaches that treat resilience as a technical and one-size-fits-all policy, and instead advances a nuanced understanding of resilience as a social process enacted through everyday practices of trusted actors. In doing so, the paper contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship reframing resilience not as a static attribute or the product of external intervention, but as both a capacity and a process shaped by local agency, cooperation, social ties, and community resources.
