NAN-H-58
Collaboration
By Angela Atabo
Abuja, Aug. 3, 2017 (NAN) The National Orientation Agency (NOA) and Anti-Corruption and Research Based Data Initiative, a coalition of civil society organisations, on Thursday began partnership to curb hate speeches and foster peace in Nigeria.
Receiving the group in Abuja, Director-General of NOA, Mr Garba Abari, said the partnership was apt and that the initiative would enhance the well-being of the country.
Abari said it was true that all was not well with the country, but urged Nigerians not to lament because what was being experienced, were challenges associated with nation-building.
According to him, the nation might have made mistakes in the past and these are the things that are now hunting the country, but Nigerians can retrace their steps by ensuring that all citizens play their roles.
He said that this could be done through peaceful coexistence, and not by hate speech, rancour, agitation and acrimony which could lead to war.
“Peace is not a means to an end; it is an end in itself. What I have seen from practical experiences shows what lack of peace can do to a people, a community and a nation.
“I have personally experienced what it feels like to have a non-peaceful community. I came from Potiskum and lived in Maiduguri; I saw what the insurgency did to those areas.
“I saw the insurgency both at infancy, its development to maturity, when it reached its crescendo and when it is being now degraded. So, I know what a peaceful atmosphere can be and vice versa.
“When schools, markets, religious places cannot open and the whole town is shut down, you will know that peace has no substitute.
“Where did we miss the bus that got us where we are today? It is simply because a lot of mistakes were made in the past.
“For this reason, the nation allowed the political, economical and social space to be taken over by people who have no sense of where this country is coming from and therefore we must never allow it,’’ he said.
Abari said that what the country needed more now was peace, adding that stakeholders should come together to give life to the ideals of oneness, love and unity in diversity.
He said that there was need to talk to citizens to ensure that the political space was taken in order to dislodge all the interlopers that had no business determining the way Nigeria should go.
He urged Nigerians to uphold the core values of the nation, which included discipline, integrity, dignity of labour, social justice, religious tolerance, self-reliance and patriotism.
Earlier, Mr Dennis Aghanya, Executive Secretary of the CSO, had said that the visit to NOA was aimed at ensuring the peace of the country.
Aghanya said that there was need to partner NOA because of its assignment of taking government policies to the grassroots to transform minds of people.
He said the CSO nurtured the collaboration with the agency to combat, in their ways, the ills in the country, especially hate speech occasioned by agitations and counter-agitations.
According to Aghanya, the present environment of rancour, acrimony and disunity is deterring the government from fulfilling its mandate, hence the partnership.
He said that over 40 CSOs were in a coalition in National Peace Initiative to sensitise Nigerians to achieve the desired peace in the country.
“At the end of it, we would have succeeded in hearing from almost all Nigerians and sum up our research to come up with workable ideas that will be acceptable to all.
“Then, we will organise a national peace summit to deliberate on these issues after which we will go beyond meeting leadership of the agitators and identifiable partners in nation-building to meeting with the common man’’
Aghanya said this would bring back the nation on the path of peaceful coexistence and called on stakeholders to be involved in the movement for peace. (NAN)
ATAB/OPI/OPI