Agency to ensure citizens own roadmap to end conflict in Plateau
The Plateau Peace Building Agency (PPBA), which has come up with a five years strategic plan, aimed at addressing the issues of conflicts in Plateau State, has taken yet another step to expand its consultation with stakeholders, with the view to ensure that citizens own the final document that will hitherto address the issues of farmer/herders, religious and other societal conflicts in the State.
Speaking recently at once again an expanded fora with stakeholders, tagged High Level Technical Session, to review the strategic plan that will further fine-tune the final document, the Director General PPBA, Mr. Joseph Lengmang, said the Agency with its core values of fairness, equality and justice, believes that the task of sustainable peace building and conflict prevention can only thrive in an atmosphere of inclusiveness.
Lengmang said, “We uphold the principle of wider consultation and popular participation of relevant stakeholders to deliver on our goals and target, by also upholding and promoting the ideas of impartiality and objectivity by believing in the sanctity of human dignity that all human beings are equal and deserves to be respected as such irrespective of their race, ethnicity, religion, ideology and party affiliation”, he said.
However, the head of facilitator at the fora, Mr. Chris Kwaja, who was also the immediate past Director General Research and Planning Plateau State governor’s office, during the past administration, said he represents the United States Institute For Peace Senior Working Group in Nigeria, and has the mandate to work with governors within northern Nigeria to ensure governors are provided with the needed technical support in terms of how they respond to issues of conflict management and peace building.
Kwaja said the PPBA continuous meeting with stakeholders at providing a document that will address the issue of peace in the State is imperative for the organisation he represents for two major reasons because his allied seek ways to support government on how to manage conflicts and to ensure that government invests more on peace rather than security.
“The drivers of peace must be developed, nurtured and maintained which includes being proactive, rather than investing so much on security which only seeks to manage the already escalated tension”, Kwaja said.
Our correspondent however reports that the recent concluded stakeholders meeting marks the end of fine-tuning the document, which will be ready for launch by the State Governor, Bar. Simon Lalong in the coming weeks.
