The Kaduna State Peace Commission in collaboration with LEGASI, a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), has engaged stakeholders in an interactive dialogue to strengthen peaceful and harmonious co-existence in the State.
In an interview, shortly after the event, on Thursday, the Executive Vice-Chairman of the commission, Mr Saleh Mohale, said the event was an Inter-faith and Inter-cultural Dialogue to Promote Community Cohesion and Resilience.
He said the objective was to bring together key stakeholders to review impact of conflicts and insecurity on social well-being and economic development of the people.
According to him, the discussions will guide interventions that will be implemented to deepen benefits of peaceful and harmonious relations among diverse religious and ethnic groups by government, civil society and wide range of stakeholders.
Mohale said the dialogue would also fashion ways of ensuring cultural cohesion in Kaduna state.
He said it was a continuation of the broad interaction and interchange taking place in the state to promote understanding, “and generate ideas that will be implemented to further deepen the existing peace and social harmony in the state.
“The participant will contribute ideas and suggestions that will address the key drivers of some of the social grievance that were experienced in previous years.”
Mohale said the dialogue had yielded great success looking at the number of people keying up to the peace process, adding that there had been increasing understanding and peaceful existence had significantly improved in the state in the last two years.
“From our work in the past five years, we have come to realise that traditional rulers in the state are among the most respected and people seriously listen to them and they are making enormous contributions, we are taking them along in the process.
“The major problem have been low capacity of the traditional rulers to respond to emerging trends of violent conflicts as well as criminal activities.
”Because the traditional rulers are largely based in rural areas and may not have both the national and international dimensions to arms, illicit weapons trades narcotic and issues related to them.
”Sometimes they may respond inappropriately and rather than recognising their limitations, people may begin to blame them on something they do not have adequate understanding on as well as in that capacity to respond.”
He therefore said that the commission would train the traditional rulers and equip them with required knowledge, skills and capacity to understand the nature of the emerging challenges.
Mohale said the up skilling would enable them to appropriately respond and create broad linkages with security agencies and support groups that will help them address some of the challenges whenever they arise within their own domain.
On her part, Ms Kaltume Abdullaziz, Executive Director, King Abdullahi Inter-religion and Inter-cultural Centre for Dialogue, said the event was to synthesise the ongoing crisis in some part of the state and beyond.
“We decided to bring together critical stakeholders to move discussions to go beyond building harmonious relationship to discussing issues that affect us directly as a society.
“While calling on leaders to begin to exercise their duties, at the end of the event they will be coming up with policy brief to serve as a recommendation to the state government to ascertain and put priority to the need of the people,” she said.
The Director-General of Kaduna State Bureau for Interfaith, Mr Tahir Umar-Tahir, said the bureau was set up to promote dialogue and religious harmony.
Represented by Tahir Ibrahim, he assured of the bureau’s support to traditional leaders in order for them to promote peace in their communities and the development of the state.
On his part, Project Officer SARVE III, ActionAid, Mr Cornelius Shija, said drug addiction was on the rise in communities across the state.
“This trend needs to be addressed because it is becoming alarming, the numbers are going up and this discussion should be channeled into this action,” he said.
Shija said ActionAid was working with government to address the menace, adding “you will be amazed at the number of drugs being mopped up in communities.”
A traditional leader, Abdullahi Hassan expressed concern over the proliferation of half-baked `religious leaders’ being allowed to preach openly in spite of their poor knowledge of the religion they profess.
The Executive Director, Improvement in Respect to Social Status of Disability, Dr Micah Shabi, said communities needed to understand each other’s differences in order to move forward.
