Buhari Links Poverty, Unemployment, Injustice To Incessant Conflicts In Nigeria

Posted by African Examiner Featured, Latest Headlines, News Monday, January 25th, 2016

President Muhammadu Buhari said Monday in Abuja that poverty, injustice and lack of job opportunities were mainly responsible for inter-communal and intra-communal conflicts in Nigeria.

The President said this while receiving a delegation from the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, an organization which focuses on the promotion of peace in Nigeria.

President Buhari noted if Nigeria must achieve enduring peace, greater effort must be made to eradicate poverty and injustice. He described ethnic and religious conflicts in parts of the country as outward manifestations of underlying problems of joblessness, injustice and poverty.

Speaking on conflicts between farmers and herdsmen, President Buhari in a statement issued by his SSA on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, said that a plan to map out grazing areas would soon be presented to the Nigerian Governors Forum as a temporary solution to the frequent conflicts until cattle owners are persuaded to adopt other means of rearing their cattle.

The President commended the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue for the relative peace that had returned to Plateau State as well as their on-going activity in Southern Kaduna.

He agreed with the Centre that dialogue was always preferable to the use of law and order mechanisms and force in the resolution of conflicts.

The Executive Director of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, David Harland told President Buhari that following their success in facilitating the settlement of the inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflicts in Plateau State, the group had moved to Kaduna State.

He expressed hope that the techniques used in bringing peace to Plateau State could be deployed to deal with the Boko Haram insurgency and other conflicts in Nigeria.