The Role of Historical Consciousness in Peacebuilding: A Professional Practitioner’s Guide for North Central Nigeria

This study develops a professional practitioner framework for deploying historical consciousness as a resource for peacebuilding in communities experiencing recurring inter-communal violence in Nigeria's North Central geopolitical zone, with particular reference to Plateau, Benue, and Nasarawa States. Historical consciousness refers to the capacity of communities to critically understand the historical processes that produced current conflicts, including colonial land tenure disruptions, identity-based political manipulation, and environmental resource competition. Using a professional practitioner research design, the study draws on participatory action research with 15 peacebuilding practitioners, documentary analysis of community dialogue programme reports, and secondary peacebuilding literature published between 2020 and 2024. The Historical Consciousness Theory and the Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding Nexus Framework provide the analytical lenses. Findings reveal that peacebuilding programmes incorporating structured historical dialogue sessions enabling communities to trace the origins of land and identity conflicts achieve significantly higher levels of sustainable reconciliation compared to programmes focused solely on mediation of present-day grievances. The study documents an original historical consciousness peacebuilding protocol developed through practitioner collaboration in Plateau State. Recommendations include the adoption of this protocol by the National Peace Commission and the development of certified historical peacebuilding facilitator training programmes. Keywords: historical consciousness, peacebuilding, North Central Nigeria, transitional justice, inter-communal conflict.