Victor Ezeja
Foundation for Peace Professionals also known as PeacePro has called on presidential candidates and their political parties in Nigeria, to adopt the organisation’s peacebuilding plan to heal the nation.
Peacepro, a popular peacebuilding organisation stressed that there must be healing, reconciliation and genuine conversation around issues hurting different sections of the country for us to make genuine progress in our quest for good governance.
In a statement by the executive director of Peacepro, Abdulrazaq Hamzat, the group said any government that is able to mobilize a significant population of the country around issues of peacebuilding will achieve tremendous success in governance.
According to Hamzat, the issues that led to Nigeria’s civil war in 1966 and those after are part of the fundamental challenges holding Nigeria back from progress.
“We must recognize that people, whose tribal and family members were cruelly murdered in the first coup, counter-coup, pogrom, civil war and various riots and organised criminality are still hurting”. Hamzat said, adding that they are all frontline victims still nursing the pains of the past.
Hamzat maintained that Nigeria as a country should offer an apology and if possible, relief to these set of victims and a national apology to all Nigerians, who may have been directly or indirectly affected by these unfortunate incidents.
“This singular action will begin the process of leading Nigeria to civil peace. Hamzat said.
He further explained that Peacepro had since identified national peacebuilding as a necessity to prevent continuous self-sabotage in the country.
This realisation made the organisation develop a national peacebuilding plan, which it has continued to pitch to leaders for consideration in the interest of the country.
“As Nigeria approaches the 2023 general election, we are therefore using this opportunity to call on leading presidential candidates, including Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling party and Atiku Abubakar of the major opposition, including candidates of other political parties to consider the adoption of a national peacebuilding strategy as a cornerstone to our quest for good governance. Hamzat said.
