By: Mike Okoh, Kaduna
Civil Society Organization, (CSO) under the auspices of International Alert, (IA) Nigeria said it has established dialogue platform in two Northwest Nigerian states.
The Country Director, International Alert, Mr. Paul Nyulaku stated this during a one day State-level Conflict, Justice and Stability Planning Workshop held in Kaduna on Monday.
According to him, four local Government Areas, Chikun and Jema’a in Kaduna, Tsafe and Birnin Magani in Zamfara state, were identified as crisis prone areas and as such the NGO deemed it fit to establish the community dialogue initiative as panacea to tackle the rising crises in the region.This initiative is coming barely two months after the NGO in collaboration with Global Peace Development built a safespace for women and girls in Kafanchan, the headquarters of the southern Kaduna people.
The Country Director in his earlier remarks stressed that the platforms were established to deal with the drivers of conflict and instabilities in those locations, describing the workshop as a Multi- stakeholders, focusing on planned priority around conflict and access to justice and accountability.
”We have been operating in Kaduna and Zamfara states for the past one year, “Particularly in Chikun and Jama’a in Kaduna, and Tsafe and Birnin Magaji in Zamfara state.
“In all these locations we have established community dialogue platforms that have actually been making efforts to deal with the drivers of conflict and instabilities in those locations”
“We are having this conversion at this time, which is about looking at priority at that level. We are doing it because we want an alignment of those priority at the community level with LG priorities as well as state level priorities.
“This is important because of the uptake of the issues that we have found out at the community levels having work there in the last one year.
“So we are trying to use this as an opportunity to established that alignment between communities, LGs and States government to identify what these institutions, maybe for picking up and addressing some of the issues that communities are grabbling with.
“To do an overall review basically of what successes we have achieved, and what other responses at that LG level and state govt levels are important to ensure we established stability in these locations.
“This is fundamentally going to be a modeling, modeling in approach in a way that we are using. This model can then be adopted, duplicated across the states and in other States, because this model is specific to what role communities can play in addressing their issues.And we call that plan that communities are developing as community justice and stability plans. It simply means that we encapsulate all of the priorities around the thematic areas in form of a plan.
“And by plan, it means who does what, when, and how in dealing with all there issues at the community level. And we hope that the networking opportunity that this workshop will provides will help community to deal with this issues in a more concerted manner with the LG and state governments”, Mr. Paul said.
In his remarks, the Executive Director Global Peace Development, Mr. Esike Ebruke said that the workshop is part of the design of the project inclusive of peace commission works in Kaduna state.
Esike said, “What we expected from the community is to ensure stability of security for every man’s and woman in Kaduna state irrespective of where you come from. He
expressed satisfaction with the progress so far with men and women having access to justice.
“Some of you working with us know there are progress in those community, and you would know women and girls are having access. Last week, there were reported cases that were not reported before and some of these people have been prosecuted.
“One major part is that when the justice system is working, people in the community works, traditional system worka, there’ll be very strong stable society.” Esike reiterated.
Speaking with Journalists shortly after the event, the Executive Director Voluntary Aid Initiatives, (VAI) a local implementing partner for Int’l Alert in Zamfara state, Musa Umar said almost all their stakeholders in the project are in attendance, both from the government and private side and should be able to take home and follow up to ensure all that have been discussed.
Umar stressed that, “where it required policy review or not in the state assembly for bill, we go for it. Zamfara is facing a lot of issues surrounding insecurity especially bandits: Human development capital issue and GBV issues respectively.
“We need GBV finance support trust funds to support survivals to be able to access justice that’s 1. Secondly, Local Justice system, can be adopted by the local justice system. The formal justices system has a lots of bottleneck and delay.”
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