The Presidency on Tuesday said nearly 70 percent of security challenges in Nigeria’s North-Central region can be resolved through dialogue and community engagement rather than force.
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Community Engagement (North-Central), Dr. Abiodun Essiet, disclosed this during a capacity-building training for stakeholders at the State House, Abuja.
“From our analysis, nearly 70 percent of the security challenges in the North-Central can be addressed through dialogue, reconciliation, intelligence sharing, and community engagement, rather than through force alone,” Essiet said.
She recalled the June 5 launch of the Presidential Community Engagement Peace Initiative (PCEPI) in Jos, describing it as a “significant step” in promoting unity and social cohesion. She also announced a partnership with the International Communities Organisation (ICO) to implement the UN’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) recommendations through a project titled Promoting Community Peace and Strengthening Social Cohesion in North-Central Nigeria.
Essiet said a peace structure will be established across all 110 local government areas of the region to gather intelligence, facilitate dialogue, and address root causes of conflict. “Once we succeed in resolving internal communal conflicts, we will already be halfway to overcoming insecurity in the North-Central,” she added.
The training featured sessions on peacebuilding, conflict resolution, intelligence gathering, and state-level risk mapping.
Commandant-General of the Nigerian Forest Security Service (NFSS), Ambassador Joshua Osatimehin Wole, identified forests and border areas as major security pressure points. He noted that Nigeria has 1,129 forest reserves, with 174 in the North-Central, and called for tighter surveillance in Niger, Kwara, and Benue states, which share international borders.
“We must create additional security agencies to conduct continuous surveillance. The insecurity we face today goes beyond farmers-herders clashes and must also be viewed in the context of the post-Gaddafi era in the Sahel,” Wole said.
Also speaking, MacArthur Foundation Director, Kole Shettima, stressed that peace is essential for development and urged the National Assembly to strengthen traditional institutions, noting that communities could learn from historical conflict resolution methods.
