Transition to lasting peace in Northeast demands strong engagement with religious leaders, others – PCNI

The Chairman of the Presidential Committee on North East Initiative (PCNI), retired General Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma has posited that the transition to recovery of peace in the region needs a strong engagement with religious, community leaders and other stakeholders to facilitate an understanding of the shared vision for lasting peace in the area. According to him, religious leaders and other stakeholders have held a parley to promote peace building in the North East. Retired General Danjuma made this known on Friday in an address in Bauchi at the opening of the one-day Inter-Religious Dialogue for Peaceful Co-existence in the North East organised by PCNI and Green Horizon. “The transition to recovery needs a strong engagement with religious, community leaders and other stakeholders to facilitate understanding of the shared vision for lasting peace”, he said. “The PCNI acknowledges the dynamics and challenges inherent in the quest to rebuild lives and livelihoods as well as social cohesion. PCNI also acknowledges and upholds the need for aggrieved parties to work at closure for their pains and losses,” Danjuma added. The Bauchi State PCNI coordinator, Mallam Bala Inuwa who represented the Committee’s Chairman noted that, “the stakeholders must leverage on the norms and values that promote peace, equity and justice to build an enabling environment for resilience and address lingering grievances”. Also speaking, the Chairman, Green Horizon, Professor Muhammed Tabiu said that the essence of the inter-faith dialogue was to promote peace as a fundamental component of recovery in the North East. Professor Tabiu said, “As you all know, the Boko Haram crisis in the North East of Nigeria devastated the region beyond description. In a period of about eight years, the crisis consumed an estimated 30,000 lives and displaced over 2 million lives from their homes. “This is said from the destruction of towns and villages, as well as valuable government facilities like schools, hospitals, health centers, courts, police stations, prisons and many more. While the three states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe bore the worst brunt of this monumental calamity, no state in the region was left untouched,”he said. In a remark, Galadiman Bauchi, District Head of Zungur, Alhaji Sa’idu Jahun said that, traditional rulers as custodians of norms and culture must spearhead all peace building efforts as parts of their primary responsibility. ‎A lecturer from the Department of Islamic Studies, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, Dr Mustapha Isah Kasim stressed that, the need for dialogue between adherents of the Islamic and Christian faith is imperative as the two are being explored by some unscrupulous elements to cause chaos. A Christian leader, Ishaya Buba Bajama while speaking called on government to strive to ensure equity and justice as injustice bring about conflicts. On his part, a Islamic Cleric, Malam Musa Dan’azumi Tafawa Balewa commended PCNI and other stakeholders for organising the Interfaith engagement to ensure religious and communal harmony in the region in order to have a lasting peace. Samuel Luka, Bauchi