Senior religious leaders meet in Kaduna to deliberate on peace
By: Austine Agbo Emmanuel, Kaduna
http://www.newsportng.com.ng Global Peace Foundation Nigeria, (GPFN) in conjunction with the Christian Association of Nigeria, (CAN) and Jama’atu Nasril Islam, (JNI) Kaduna state chapter has organized a one day peace conference in Kaduna state.
The meeting with senior religious leaders on Tuesday, seek to address the challenges bedeviling the peaceful coexistience of Kaduna citizens who are divided across religious, political and tribal lines as panacea for sustainable growth and development.
Kaduna, with long time history of violent extremism has had it’s fair sharing of religious, tribal, communal and political crisis leading to distrust and intolerance amongst members of the two dominant religions.
Speaking at the One-Day event, the Country Director GPFN Rev. Dr. John Joseph Hayab noted that the foundation want to leverage on the moral authority of faith leaders to promote peace in Kaduna state.
He disclosed that JNI and CAN invited 50 persons from each Faith base organizations , totalling 100 to discuss and find a way out on what they need to do to foster peace amongst Kaduna residents, while noting that approaches used in mitigating crisis with track record of successes in years past would be adopted for better results
Hayab said, ”we know the roles religion plays in helping to address insecurity and peace in a community and we want to leverage on the moral authority of these faith leaders to continue to promote peace in Kaduna state.
“We are saying that Kaduna is back to good old days of friendship and we need to sustain it. We do not want to wait until things happen before we start looking for ways forward. JNI and CAN invited 50 persons from each Faith organization so we can discuss and find a way out on what we did that led to our success in the past before things went bad and also what we need to do now.
“We need to show good example to our followers because when we fail to do that, then criminals can penetrate us and cause division and we will continue to lose life and properties to violence. We want our friendship back and every faith leader must give his faith a good name by their actions.
“We had a lot of engagements in the past that led to our successes in nine years before things went bad. We were able to remove stereotyping, talking to and listening to one another to address issues rather than looking at it with sentiment.
”We also changed our communication from violent to non violent Communication but when some powers came and began to plant division and reminding us on the need not to trust the other people unfortunately those who were at that time did not refuse that but yielded to it and we went back again to years of destructions and division but we are challenging ourselves to maintain this for ten, fifteen and possibly 20 years then we would have grown a new generation of young people who have not been part of this stereotyping and differences that we have among ourselves and they will begin to see each other as friends in the community without carrying dagger against themselves.”
On his part, the Northern Coordinator, GPFN Sheikh Abdullahi Haliru Maraya remarked that peace is priceless, a must and critical asset in every society.
Sheikh Maraya noted that the new structure of leadership in Kaduna state has opened a new page of life and as such called on youths to desist from any protest that would birth unrest in the country.
He stressed that past experiences had shown the fact that peaceful protests are hijacked by hoodlums, and as such encouraged youths to channel their grievances through their representatives rather than embarking on actions capable of causing chaos.
Speaking with newsmen shortly after the event, the chairman of CAN and JNI Rev. Caleb Ma’aji and Prof. Mohammed-Shafiu Abdullahi, promised that they will try their best to build peace across board by using the pulpit to propagate religious harmony against hate speech and violent communication.
Senior religious leaders meet in Kaduna to deliberate on peace