Benue, Kaduna, Zamfara parley over insecurity

Benue, Kaduna and Zamfara States are collaborating to tackle insecurity through the NEEM Foundation and Karuna Centre for Peace Building and other non-profit organisations.

This was disclosed yesterday by the NGOs, under the auspices of the NEEM Foundation Interstate Forum Agenda in Makurdi.

According to the Executive Director, Local Initiative, Zamfara State, Musa Aboki, the initiative is to encourage alternative or informal crisis resolution mechanism like dialogue rather than the formal means of going to the law courts and the security agencies which, most times, leaves lasting bitterness.

The foundation said that the three states were selected through a process and the prevalence of farmers /herders’ conflicts, kidnappings and banditry as indices.

It noted that it had identified the flashpoints.

The group said that their five-year experiment of two council areas and six communities in each of the three states was an enormous success.

They said now that the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) and the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) have embraced dialogue, clashes between herders and herders have drastically reduced.

Programme Manager, Sidika Bobo, said: “AFAN and MACBAN are now like husband and wife. They are now friendly and sincere with each other.”

He explained that they work in collaboration with the state governments of the three pilot states, calling on the Federal Government to step in and scale up the initiative to cover more states.