Following the prolonged violent conflicts that have claimed several lives in different parts of Nigeria, the Cleen Foundation, in partnership with the University of California, has trained over 50 persons on Early Warning and Early Response (EWER) in Plateau State.
The trainees were drawn from the communities of Barkin Ladi and Jos South Local Government Areas of the state.
Barkin Ladi and Jos South Local Government Areas have been an epic centre of violent conflicts due to forceful invasion of land, and farmer-herder clashes, amongst other criminality.
Speaking during the capacity-building workshop held on Thursday at Valada Hotel, Jos, the Executive Director of Cleen Foundation, Gad Peter, said the training is a continuation of efforts with its partners, the University of California to support and increased peace and stability in Plateau State, especially in Barkin Ladi and Jos South Local Government Areas.
According to Peter, “I am sure you are aware of efforts that the federal and state governments in collaboration with the international communities are making to increase peace and stability.
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“What we are doing today is to train about 50 persons from these two local governments on early warning and early response (EWER) and the ability to increase community resilience; and to be able to improve dialogue in their actions.
“Above all is to have a good relationship with the traditional institutions, religious leaders and the Local Government agency that has those mandates to provide peace and security because as civilians you cannot do much more than to raise alarm and call the attention of the stakeholders to do the needful.
“So we established what we called community safety partnership (CSP) and we will establish the community accountability forum (CAF). All of these are members of the communities cutting across from Fulani to Berom, Christian to Muslim, women to men and young people to ensure that they were been able to work together to promote peace and security, and to improve security in their communities.
“The role of the Community Accountability Forum (CAF) is to help mitigate conflict. Conflict cannot be averted totally but you can use the negative impact of conflict on people. It is for them to be able to draw the attention of the Local Government chairman, the sector commandant, the District Police officer (DPO) and other people on issues affecting their community and for them to appeal to the community members, especially the stakeholders; and to help more importantly in providing this early warning that would lead to early action.
“Link and expand your operations by working with other people to develop an actionable emergency response plan,” Peter charged the participants.
He also revealed that the foundation is determined to cascade down the training to the other Northern states to prevent, and de-escalate violence.
Source: Sun Newspaper