From engineering student to campus mediator: Chidera’s year with HAPEI

Chidera Okonkwo did not plan to spend her third year at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, running dialogue circles. She was an electrical engineering student, second in her class, aiming for a graduate program abroad. Then a fight broke out during Fresher’s Week that left two of her coursemates in the campus clinic. Weeks later she saw a HAPEI ambassador poster near the Faculty of Engineering canteen. She scanned the QR code, half-curious. Twelve months on, she has trained sixty of her peers in basic conflict mediation.

We met her at the university’s Central Library on a wet Tuesday afternoon. She was wearing a HAPEI training weekend hoodie and carrying a folder of notes from a workshop she was running the next morning. What follows is an edited transcript.

You did not have a background in peace work. What drew you in?

Honestly? Anger. That fight I mentioned, one of the boys was my classmate. He had come to Nsukka from Yola. The other was from a village not far from mine. Neither of them really knew what the argument was about by the end of it, but by then it did not matter. Somebody had gotten hit and pride took over. I remember thinking, this is not a leadership problem, this is a skills problem. Nobody in that room knew how to slow the temperature down. I wanted to be somebody who could.

What surprised you about the training?

How practical it was. I thought it would be a lot of theory, a lot of Nelson Mandela quotes. Actually, ninety percent of it was drills. Role-plays. Watching yourself back on video. Learning how to ask a question that does not immediately trigger defensiveness. When to sit down. When to stand up. When to physically move the group. Peace work is really craft work.

You have run three of your own dialogue sessions on campus this year. What does that look like in practice?

Small. That is the honest answer. Six to ten students, usually, sitting in a circle in a booked classroom. Sometimes a specific incident brought them in, sometimes it is a standing group we have built up. We start with a question that is not the question. Something like, when you think about your hall of residence, what does it smell like? Just to get people talking about the specific and the concrete, not the abstract. From there we can drift into what is really going on.

What is next for you?

Finishing my degree, hopefully at the top of my class. But I am also applying for HAPEI’s junior program associate role. I never expected to say this, but I think this is the work I want to do. Engineering can wait a year. Or ten.

Edited by Ifeoma Anigbogu.