Structural Violence and Peacebuilding Deficits in Northern Nigeria: A Critical Theoretical Analysis

This study offers a critical theoretical analysis of structural violence as a foundational dimension of peacebuilding deficits in northern Nigeria, spanning the North West, North East, and North Central geopolitical zones. While direct violence in northern Nigeria has attracted significant scholarly and policy attention, the structural violence embedded in Nigeria's political economy, educational system, and governance architecture has been insufficiently theorised as both a root cause of recurrent conflict and a barrier to sustainable peacebuilding. Employing a critical theory research design, the study integrates documentary analysis of Nigeria's human development indices, governance quality reports, and poverty data from 2015 to 2024 with critical discourse analysis of 45 government and civil society peacebuilding policy documents. The theoretical contribution is an original Structural Violence Peacebuilding Deficit Model for northern Nigeria, which builds on Galtung's foundational structural violence concept while incorporating Nigeria-specific institutional dimensions including the almajiri system, political godfatherism, and oil rent exclusion. Findings demonstrate that peacebuilding programmes in northern Nigeria that address only direct violence without targeting structural violence drivers achieve only temporary and geographically limited conflict reduction. The model identifies five structural violence drivers as priority targets for transformative peacebuilding investment. Recommendations include adopting structural violence impact assessments as prerequisites for peacebuilding programme design, reforming educational and social protection policy in northern Nigeria as conflict prevention measures, and advocating for structural violence-responsive national peace policy. Keywords: structural violence, peacebuilding, northern Nigeria, critical theory, Galtung.