Mutfwang, Agwai Charge Families, Communities on Mitigation, End of Conflict

Seriki Adinoyi in Jos

Plateau State Governor, Caleb Mutfwang and former Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Lt. General Martin Luther Agwai, have charged families and communities as smaller units of the nation to prioritise peaceful co-existence and find ways to mitigate and resolve conflicts before they escalate.
The duo spoke at a workshop organised by Middle Belt Brain Trust (MBBT) in partnership with Plateau State Peace Building Agency and Institute for Integrated Transitions towards mitigating and resolving conflicts in the state and others in the Middle Belt region.
Mutfwang noted that the workshop with the theme: ‘Conflict Sensitivity Workshop and Retreat for Senior Government Officials’ was apt and timely and also significant as it was to deal with the matter of conflict sensitivity in the society.
“We live in times of conflict, we live in the midst of conflict, and as long as there are human beings, there will always be conflict because we live in a multicultural, multi-religious, multi ethnic society – that today has even taken a global dimension. So, conflict is with us on a daily basis,” he said.
Oftentimes, he said, “We play the ostrich when we forget to think through policy initiatives and through policy implementation,” noting that one way to minimise conflict was through collaboration, understanding, and discussions.
“We must be able to lay all the cards on the table, must be perceived to be fair, be honest, be just, and be equitable. And once people discover that what we are bringing to the table is a sense of fairness and equity, there’s less chance for conflict,” the governor added.
Delivering the keynote address with the topic ‘MBBT Priorities and Complex Problems, Cognitive Diversity and How to Harness It’, Agwai observed that the world today was facing numerous conflict challenges ranging from the Middle East to Sub Saharan Africa, extremism and unhealthy rivalry which was becoming a norm.

He said the MBBT was focused on key medium-term structural and institutional challenges that have an outsized impact on the Middle Belt’s violence and future prospects of peace and prosperity.

Lamenting the huge damage violent conflict has caused Nigeria, Agwai said the nation’s enormous resources that should be used to move it forward were often diverted to rebuild the destruction caused by conflicts thereby causing economic depreciation.

Encouraging the masses to do their best to ensure that conflict was minimised, Agwai said peaceful co-existence should start from the families to the communities and then to the nation.