The challenge of peace building in Nigeria is increasing as communities continue to show adversary tendencies. This is happening even after many third party conflict transformation efforts have been expended to resolve and set a conducive climate for stakeholders to sustain peace. Some peace building assessment projects have indicated that the peace building process is not fully realised, which justifies exploring the place of literacy education in peace building. Since illiteracy has been identified as one major factor which promotes conflict and violence in Nigeria's multiethnic communities, the importance of functional literacy is further stressed. In this paper, a review of some adult education teaching theories is undertaken, and a model for literacy functionality--a transformative teaching paradigm for peace building called "cemento-conscio education"--is developed. (Contains 1 figure.)