The Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (PCVE) Network has urged stakeholders to intensify grassroots engagement to strengthen community resilience against Nigeria’s growing security challenges.
The Sokoto State Chairman of the network, Dr Ahmad Sirajo, made the call at a press conference on Tuesday in Sokoto.
Sirajo said deeper community engagement would improve understanding of local drivers of extremism and lay foundations for inclusive and sustainable prevention planning.
He said the network had facilitated PCVE co-creation dialogues, bringing communities and government actors together to design locally tailored action plans.
“These forums helped identify priorities such as youth economic empowerment, early warning mechanisms, and expanded dialogue and consultation platforms.
“Our commitment is unwavering, as we strengthen PCVE institutionalisation through coordination, stakeholder engagement, and knowledge-driven decision-making,” he said.
Sirajo said stakeholders were actively engaged to understand the evolving extremist landscape and challenges confronting current interventions.
According to him, the objective was to provide clarity, progress updates, and a call to collective action for residents to participate in solutions.
He noted that the North-West had suffered farmer-herder clashes, banditry, kidnapping, and cattle rustling, worsening insecurity across communities.
Sirajo stressed a multi-sectoral, whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach for sustained collaboration among government, civil society and international partners.
He said such collaboration would deliver impactful interventions at national, state and sub-national levels.
The chairman assured continued engagement with governments, legislatures and security leaders to secure political backing and resources for PCVE sustainability.
He reiterated the network’s commitment to empowering communities with early warning tools and dialogue platforms to build trust between citizens and authorities.
Sirajo highlighted future opportunities including deeper youth engagement, targeted economic interventions, and embedding PCVE structures within government planning systems.
He acknowledged persistent challenges, including armed groups, youth unemployment, socio-economic exclusion and weak intelligence linkages in some local government areas.
“Security operations alone cannot end violent extremism; this is a shared governance, development and community resilience challenge,” he said.
He urged residents to remain vigilant, support community alerts, promote peace messages, reject extremist narratives and lead inclusive resilience-building campaigns. (
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