Policy and Advocacy Specialist

Policy and Advocacy Specialist -A Community-Centred Approach to Transforming Criminality and Violence in the Niger Delta

Location: Port Harcourt, Nigeria (5 months)

Search for Common Ground (Search) is an international non-profit organization that promotes the peaceful transformation of conflict. With headquarters in Washington, DC and Brussels, Belgium, Search’s mission is to transform how individuals, organizations, and governments deal with conflict—moving away from destructive approaches and towards cooperative solutions. With more than 700 staff worldwide, Search implements projects in more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and North America.

Position Summary

Search is seeking an experienced Policy and Advocacy Specialist for a consortium project in Rivers, Bayelsa and Delta States. The role will specifically support the engagement of high level stakeholders and implementation of high level dialogues towards addressing the conflict drivers in the Niger Delta at State, Regional and National levels during the 6 months No Cost Extension Period within the implementation timeline of the project. The project is funded by the European Union and implemented in consortium with Search for Common Ground, Stakeholder Democracy Network and Partnership Initiative in the Niger Delta. 

The overall goal of the project is fostering inclusive community security approaches to address the systemic drivers of violence and criminality in Bayelsa, Delta, and Rivers States. 

The position requires an experienced advocacy, policy analyst, conflict transformation, peacebuilding and or development expert, conversant with leading high level engagement at National level and the Niger Delta Region and in facilitating high level dialogues. The position holder must be organized and experienced in responding to real-time conflict, peace efforts, security and the overall aim of conflict transformation. The Policy and Advocacy Specialist must have good diplomacy skills and be capable of negotiating with challenging stakeholders and facilitating high level dialogue processes. The position holder is expected to collaborate closely with the National Conflict and Policy Analyst in addressing local context, and dynamics. This position will be based in our Rivers office with frequent travels to Abuja, Bayelsa and Delta States. She/he will work under the direct supervision of the Head of Programme Implementation; Niger Delta.

The position holder will have no direct line management responsibility and collaborate with the Project Manager, Coordinators, Officers and Assistants.

Bringing together three leading peacebuilding and development organisations in the Niger Delta, the consortium offers a holistic, community-centred approach to addressing core drivers of criminality, violence, and conflict in the region, with a specific focus on the empowerment and inclusion of youth in the security of their respective communities in the Niger Delta . The consortium partners will leverage existing relationships with the action’s diverse target groups, including at-risk youth, local communities impacted by oil production and oil bunkering, state security actors, the private sector, journalists and media actors, key civil society organisations, and policymakers at the state, regional, national, and international levels, to secure broad-based buy-in and participation in the action. Overall, the project is initiating a shift in the way that relevant actors think about and approach issues of oil bunkering, criminality, and security in the Niger Delta in favour of more bottom-up, human-centred perspectives. This institutional and social shift is necessary in order to sustainably reduce the prevalence of oil bunkering and other forms of criminality and violence in the region in the long-term.

The design of the action centres around four activity streams, each addressing a systemic driver of division, violence, and criminality in Bayelsa, Rivers, and Delta States: 

Stream 1 will foster intra-community collaboration around issues of social exclusion, lack of economic opportunity, and environmental degradation.

Stream 2 will build trust and collaboration between communities and government and security actors for more participatory, community-centred security operations. 

Stream 3 will leverage arts- and culture-based approaches to foster social cohesion between divided communities both online and offline.

Stream 4 will facilitate policy change to institutionalise community-centred security approaches at the local, state, regional, national, and international levels. 

Interested candidates should send the following to our Career Portal.

Current resume

Cover Letter (which includes expectations of compensation and projected start date)

Please note that the system only has the functionality to upload two documents per application. Incomplete applications will not be accepted.

This advert will close on the 12th May 2025