Governor Mutfwang to religious leaders: “be advocates of peaceful coexistence”

Daniel Dauda, Jos

Plateau State Governor, Barr. Caleb Mutfwang has charged religious leaders to be the advocates of harmonious and peaceful coexistence in tandem with their faith based doctrines for a safer society.

Governor Mutfwang said we don’t need to enforce peace rather, we should preach peace for the purpose of progress and development in our society.

The Governor gave the admonition Thursday in Jos, while declaring open a one day training on the health approach to violence prevention for religious and faith leaders in the state.

Daily Champion reports that the training which was spearheaded by the United Religions Initiative (URI), Nigeria CCs Cluster 1, saw the attendance of Christian and Muslim leaders across the 17 local government areas of Plateau.

Pundits believe that, unwarranted commentaries and utterances by some religious leaders across board, using the pulpit have done Plateau and Nigeria more harm than good.

Governor Mutfwang, represented by the special adviser on peace building, Monday Ajiya, affirmed his administration’s commitment towards security and peaceful Plateau as he challenged participants to open their minds and speak with sincerity of purpose towards ensuring lasting solution for peace in the state and Nigeria.

According to him, the training is timely for the organizers that made the program come to reality because that is what Governor Mutfwang’s administration is yearning for, where the people will come together, interact together, dialogue together and say their problems openly and  proffer solutions by themselves so that we can have peace.

“The present government is passionate about peaceful coexistence on the Plateau so that the development and peace we are seeing today, will be sustained.

“The participants should be able to open up and say the real truth on what is bothering them so that they will develop a solution to our problems without using any coercion or force means. But, we need to have that peace within us and if we successfully achieve that, there is no need to invite anybody to come and solve our problems”, he explained.

Giving the rationale behind the training, Dr. Emmanuel Andrew Ivorgba, West Africa Regional Coordinator, United Religions Initiative (URI), revealed Plateau had its own share of conflict for quite a long time. “And this program specially focus on providing capacity for religious and faith leaders in Plateau state, focusing on what we called the health approach to violence prevention.

“We are beginning to look at the violence as a public health issue, just like epidemic you see from the world health organization (WHO) we considered that. So, we put that kind of approach in dealing with the violent conflict in our society in the same manner that epidemic and other health issues are treated globally. If we approach violence from that angle it will go a long way in deescalating it in our society.

“So this is the reason why we considered religious leaders as very important stakeholders in finding solution in resolving conflict, been beneficiaries of this training so that when they go back to their various Mosque and Churches it will help them in changing the negative mindset and perception of their subjects with regards to peaceful coexistence.

“This is just one step in many activities that we are having with different stakeholders. Last time between November and December, 2023, we actually provided a training for civil society organizations (CSOs) in Plateau state, about 12 CSOs were in attendance who are also members of the United Religions Initiative. So the next stage we are having today is for religious and faith leaders and the upcoming one, we would be focusing on the state actors, that is, the political actors and traditional rulers”, the coordinator explained.