The Director-General of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR), Dr Joseph Ochogwu, says the institute cannot do it alone and hence; it partners with civil society organisations (CSOs), the United Nations, faith-based organisations amongst others to preach its message of peace across Nigeria. In this interview with ADEOLA AKINBOBOLA, Ochogwu dissects the kinetic and non-kinetic approaches the institute employs to achieve its objectives.
Before now
When we were growing up, we have family friends who are from the core North who visit us during the Christmas season and we also do same during Sallah but today people are scared of associating with one another due to insecurity. How did we get to this state?
I think that we over exaggerate these things, if you go to the community levels, people still live like that and are united. It is when you go to the urban areas that people begin to live a bit separately, along identity lines depending on the locations, and conflict profile of that urban area. For example, places like Kaduna, Jos. Those cities are separated due to long period of protracted conflicts. So, people begin to live and form their self-identity lines. They think those identities can provide them protection, and provide them some sense of belonging against the other kind of identity, which is not correct.
Ordinarily, you would expect this kind of thing to happen in some communities where people are still a bit traditional, uneducated but sadly is happening in reverse order in city centres where you think the future of cosmopolitan centres that makes for education, makes for integration a sense of belonging in terms of township where there is no tribe or religion but sadly, conflicts seems to have drawn the line and people are already reversing to that identity, and it is not good. In local communities people still engage. For example, most of my friends who are Muslims still visit me, and I also visit them.
Social cohesion and national integration
I think these things are still very much there even during the festive period we still share gifts among ourselves. We need to be more deliberate in terms of promoting our social cohesion and national integration. The Federal, State and Local Governments need to consciously promote these things. I recall when I was a young boy growing up in Lagos, we had a lot of programme of integration especially in the barracks where you have the 9th Brigade or 21 Battalion in Ikeja cantonment.
This brings everybody together to feast, eat, drink, and during the Christmas they do the same thing. I think the federal government should consciously create these programmes because things don’t happen in voids. We need to consciously build the mindset of our people that we are one, they need to work together. Even on childrens’ day, they need to bring children from different identities and make them have a sense of belongings. We left these things and they are not helping us. So, we need to create forums and platforms where children both from the rich and poor of all tribes, of all forms of identities engage themselves and get to know themselves. Our educational system need to reinforce religious education, the federal ministry of education needs to come up with policies irrespective of the license granted when you want to operate a school. Your school system must operate in line with the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and give the children the freedom to express their religion.
We must allow those circularities happen, and make those things very clear, the kind of citizens that we want to produce. We must create an enlightened citizen; that can beat and compete anywhere in the world and become great people that they are. We can’t continue to limit them along very narrow identity lines; it does not help the country and also the individuals, and even the world at large. To promote peace therefore, we need to have enlightened citizens, it has to be a whole gamut of government approach, and a whole gamut of citizen’s approach for us to build citizens that can socialise everywhere in the world.
You said Nigerians should expect innovative and creative approach to peace resolution, how far have you gone with that?
At this level, we are striking partnerships with non-governmental organisation, community based organization, international non- governmental organization, as well as the United Nation system, partnership organisation and collaborations with other state institutions. Peace is not what you can achieve alone, peace is what you need to do with other partners, some of the innovative terms am talking about is the level of social cohesion, building systems together, and bringing people together to have a common understanding of what they need to do. Just last week, we graduated over 25 people from our strategic negotiation, and mediation training course with people cut across from different areas. That training is a life transforming training that if you pass you won’t be the same again, and we have people who came from different organizations to participate.
People came from the military, the CSOs, government institutions, private sectors. What we are doing is to upscale this level of life transforming training in the area of conflicts prevention management and resolution that once you transform the life of an individual, he is going to impact on the life of his family and his community, it’s part of the approach we have adopted. Another approach we have adopted is to reach out to our political leaders in terms of programming. We need to consciously do that. I know we have a very slim budget line but we hope that with conversations with our political leaders there will be a provision for these kinds of intervention.
Throw more light on the need to invest in the area of peace negotiation, mediation, consultation and stakeholders’ engagement?
There is no alternative to it at this point in time, and am so happy like I have mentioned in other forums that President Tinubu has started very well on the issue of engagement, consultation, engaging with different stakeholders. People want to be engaged, people want to have a sense of belonging, to engage people in conversations, they come to understand your position and their position, and build a common ground and concessions. Once you isolate people, they begin to feel the sense of exclusion, sense of marginalization, and sense of frustration, and once you have frustration you begin to have aggression, and you begin to have crisis in the society.
The President has done well in terms of kick-starting and engaging with different stakeholders. We need to up that level of engagement at different levels and they need to engage at their respective states, so also the local governments need to engage at their level. So, once you have this broader cross cutting level of engagements, in terms of dialogue, in terms of reaching out conversations, you have open up the space for people to ventilate their grievances.
Tell us more about the recent conflicts management training?
The training is open, it is a paid training. The national peace academy which is our capacity building directorate carries out those things. We have the basic conflicts management training for a start, we the advance conflicts management training to another level, and we have the strategic negotiation training which more specialised advance training for participants is. We have people from the military, police, State services, NGOs, faith based organisations, private sectors that come for the training. Is an ongoing thing and we also partnered with other institutions through collaboration and partnerships.
What are the challenges you face as regards to peace interventions?
We have the challenge of funding and sustainability of the kind intervention that we do. Sadly, the kind of budgeting system that we have doesn’t allow for an enduring sustainable programme implementation in the field of conflict resolution. It is not something you do in a patchy way, it is something that you need to be on ground from time to time. For example, the crisis in Plateau state has been on for more than 20 years and it is still there with us. It is not something we just do a quick approach and leave, we need to engage with them regularly. Those are peace infrastructures in local communities that you need to reinforce and sustain over a long period of time for them to take ownership. That is how to rebuild peace in a fragile conflicts affected communities within Nigeria, and other countries.