Bomba Dauda
The Executive Vice Chairman of the Kaduna State Peace Commission, Barr. Priscilla Ankut, said, the commission support the Peace Agreement that had taken place in Atyap Chiefdom, recently.
Ankut made the position of the commission known at an exclusive interview with Gurara Accord at the Commission’s office when the Director General of the Plateau State Peacebuilding Agency, PPBA, Mr. Joseph Lengman paid the commission a solidarity visit, yesterday.
“We support the agreement that had taken place in Atyap Chiefdom,” she said. “And as a commission, we will continue to support them to consolidate and build on the process. We hope that other chiefdoms will emulate the examples, at least learn a few lessons from the Atyap Chiefdom.
“It is by no means a perfect arrangement but, it is a start of a conversation and that others can learn from it.
“We have been engaging in Kajuru for a longer time. Different communities have submitted to us their position papers and we will review them to tackle the issues one after the other. One thing to understand is, when all these issues keep coming we try to isolate them, the issues that can be resolved will be resolved and those that can’t be managed will continue to be managed overtime.
“The most important message that we are passing is that, people do not need to resort to violence in order to settle their disputes or misunderstanding. People should have recourse to the law and that’s the way forward.”
At an interactive session with Journalists, Lengman explained that, the relative peace been experienced in Plateau has to do with the passion of the Executive Governor of Plateau State, Simon Lalong for peace, from inception he made peace and stability one of his cardinal objectives of his administration. And also, he has been working from the proactive lens rather than just being reactive, which has being the pattern of response to issues of peace and stability in Plateau State in the previous administrations. His passion for peace and stability has led to the establishment of the PPBA to ensure the harmonious co-existence of ethnic groups in the state.
He went further to say, relative peace have been achieved because they mobilized extraordinary things for peace and widening the space enough for peace, for people to lend their voices, to participate, to buy a stake for peace process, for people to decide on critical areas that affects their future
