Institute Strengthen Advocacy On Nigeria’s Conflict Early Warning Response Mechanism
By Agada Daniel, Jos
The Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, under the Federal ministry of foreign affairs is strengthening Nigeria’s conflict early warning and response mechanism, focusing on Benue, Plateau, Katsina, Kaduna, and Federal Capital Territory,FCT, Abuja respectively.
The project, supported by the United Kingdom (UK) Commonwealth Office, trained about 600 community volunteers and stakeholders across four states on conflict prevention, gender, and social inclusion.
The Director General and Chief Executive officer of the Institute, Dr. Joseph Ochogwu who doubled as team lead, made the disclosure while in an interface with the management of Plateau Peace Building Agency (PPBA) on Friday in Jos.
Ochogwu acknowledged they had series of engagement as they intensify collaboration with
security agencies, civil society organisations, traditional institutions, and local groups.
He revealed modalities for partnership with state governments to upscale training of community volunteers and
address conflict issues.
“We trained volunteers from local government communities which have a responsibility of reporting incidences independently about insecurity to our situation room in Abuja. We process and analyse those information and trangulate those information.
“We have other services across the 774 local government areas of Nigeria. We have key actors in those areas.
“So, were not actually duplicating or re-enforcing what is on ground rather were strengthening the capacity in good time, and to de-escalate the crisis and all that.
“And that is why the group of people we trained, we uniquely trained them on gender and social inclusion and as well as persons with disability to make that we mean stream those category of people.
“So, what were looking for right now is how we can partner with the respective state government to train security actors that are in the local government. Men and women who are in the frontline defending the sovereignity and integrity of the Nigerian state and ensure that their having sleepless night while we slept on our homes.
“We need to upscale the number of people who are going to participate in this one with support of the respective state governments”, he stated.
Ochogwu further argued that there are different prompt approach needed to end the recurrent violence in Nigeria.
“Some of the approach are constitutional, some are political, some are cultural, some are economic. We need the holistic approach to deal with this issues.
“And what our national conflict early warning response is doing is actually building trust largely between the state and the citizens, between the government and the people.
“That is what this early warning system is doing, and that is why we’re working with all stakeholders both at the national, subnational level as well as local communities to make sure that were able to solve this issue”, Ochogwu concluded.
