As part of its contribution to ensure national peace and progress, a religious organisation under the aegis of the King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue, KAICIID, on Thursday, called for strengthened collaboration between religious leader and policy makers in order to advance sustainable peace in Nigeria.
While bemoaning the level of insecurity in the country, the Country Director, KAICIID, Joseph Atang, said that there is need for strengthened collaboration between policy makers and religious leaders in order to address issues that bring fear to Nigerians.
He made this call during the second quarter policy review meeting of the network of policy makers supporting reconciliation, peace and security in Nigeria, with the theme: “Strengthening Collaboration between Policymakers and Religious Leaders for Human Security Provisioning in Nigeria”, in Abuja.
He said: “we have had religious leaders express deep frustration in their peace work, deep frustration, you ask them why? And we ask them why and they give us all kinds of reasons.
“Many of them have to do with policymaking, policy implementation, even there are problems with monitoring and evaluation of policy implementation. So, we are thinking that the best thing to do is to have a platform for these religious leaders that we are working with, to interact with policymakers with all of you here, so that you know you can work on each other so that we can have sustainable peace in this country.
“Religious leaders, tell policymakers this is what you should be doing and policymakers tell Religious leaders that this is what you should be doing to help us to achieve peace, sustainable peace in this country”, he added.
Earlier in his remark, the Director General, DG, Institute of Peace and Conflict Resolution, IPCR, Dr. Bakut Bakut, also harped on the need for religious leaders to concert efforts with the policy makers to ensure that issues bothering security in Nigeria are addressed.
He noted that security has become a major need for Nigerians, stressing that feasible policies geared toward promoting sustainable peace and unity in the country can not be overemphasized. (Vanguard)