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Peace-building and Reconciliation in Northern Nigeria
an article by Abdullahi Adamu
Following the recurrence of ethno-religious violence in Northern Nigeria, the northern governors forum constituted a committee to promote reconciliation and healing among the ethnic nationalities prevalent in the country.
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For the umpteenth time, it is imperative to submit that the competition for scarce economic resources exacerbates tension and disharmony among the tribes leading to a clash among civilisations as exemplified by the boko haram imbroglio.
Better still, the committee is expected to conduct a series of peace education summits in communities to educate them on the importance of early warning and response system via participatory vulnerability analysis.
However, the fundamental problem is that in this multi-religious and multi-ethnic polity democracy is still primitively defined as a game of numbers rather than a contest of ideas; it is bound to generate the tyranny of majority.
The structural violence of majoritarian tyranny is accompanied by the physical violence of minoritarian terrorism. militancy and aggression, which, in a sense, constitutes the eloquence of those rendered voiceless by the system
Dr Arthur Nwakwo constructed a coherent thesis of a people caught within the haunting dialectics of identity formation and social becoming in a plural nation-state. He problematised the strategic framework with which they must negotiate and balance the complexities of structural and and institutional disequilibria in an unfair and unjust social formation that has turned the citizens into disconnected historical objects.
Equally important to mention here is the need to ensure the speedy passage of public procurement, fiscal responsibility and legislation for protection of whistle blowers by the state house of assembly in Northern Nigeria with a view to checkmating the menace of corruption in the region.
In addition, the government in concert with the organised private sector should provide employment opportunities to teeming jobless youth by prompting the creation of small and medium scale industries supported by a robust electricity supply.
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