By Lola Seriki-Idahosa, Kaduna
Tracereporters –Kaduna Peace Commission has engaged relevant stakeholders in the development of the kaduna State Peace Commission 2024-2027 strategic frame work.
So far, the Commission has engaged CSOs, media and religious leaders in the state.
Presenting the proposed Priority Areas For Conflicts Management and Peacebuilding Interventions in Kaduna State (2024-2027) by Hajiya Khadijah Hawajah Gambo said this engagement consultations is exclusively for the Media and also for CSOs to collect their own take on what the 2024-2027 strategic plan should look like, what the vision of the commission should be and also the goals as well as what are the strategies that the commission can deploy in achieving the set goals.
According to her, “Our meeting today is a continuous engagement with relevant stakeholders in the state to develop the Kaduna state Peace Commission 2024-2027 strategic plan.
“So we have been engaging relevant stakeholders specifically with CSOs and and religious leaders in the state”.
“Today’s engagement consultations it’s exclusively for the Media and also for CSOs to collect their own take on what the 2024-27 strategic plan should look like, what the vision of the commission should be and also the goals as well as what are the strategies that the commission can deploy in achieving the set goals”.
“In our mandate, one of the things we should be doing is to deploy non Violence means in ensuring that we prevent, mitigate and also resolved conflicts in the Kaduna state”.
“We realized that to be able to prevent the conflict you must be ahead of whatever that will happen so we must have a working functional SEWER mechanism in place in all the LGA of the state as well as districts and local communities so that the respondents can be able to dictate anything that may likely cause bridge of peace in the state rather than waiting for conflicts to happen and we begin to run heather scatter”
“This meeting will help us to reason together and decide what method to adopt, It’s the understanding of the Kaduna state peace Commission that media is essentially very relevant to whether we will have peace in the state, country or not and so that understanding is what necessitated the bringing together of the traditional and also the socal Media to see to it that we are in the same page in ensuring that our reportage is conflict sensitive such that we don not escalate further the already heated polity or the community tension that we have on ground”.
“The bringing of the media was deliberate because we feel that they play a major role in whether Community stay in peace or not”.
“Religious Leaders in our view as peace Commission are equally relevant. When you follow the recent statistics that was released, Nigeria is the second most prayerful country in the world”.
“Religion to us is something very important and so they are very important I the lives of the citizens of our country”.
“So whatever message you want to pass, it will be easily transmitted when you use religious leaders, Also any negative message from religious leaders has the tendency of also exhibiting the conflict that we have”.
That’s why we are always conscious of the role they can play either positively or negatively, We have been meeting with them to let them know that whatever they do or say can go a large extent on whether we can have peace in the state or not”.
In her welcome address, the Permanent Commissioner of the Kaduna Peace Commission, Mrs Rebecca Sako John gave an overview of the commission.
She said that the commission was established because of the history of violence, conflicts and how to resolved such conflicts and have a permanent peace in the state.
