Labaran Maku tasks politicians, monarchs, media on end to clashes

The National Secretary of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Labaran Maku, has challenged politicians as well as traditional and religious leaders and the media to initiate programmes that could end the incessant clashes in parts of the federation.

The former Minister of Information and one-time Coordinating Minister of Defence in the erstwhile President Goodluck Jonathan administration made the appeal at an event in Lafia, Nasarawa State capital.

Decrying the bloodletting that has claimed thousands of lives and property of mostly rural dwellers, Maku noted that the core mandate of governance was peace upon which any progress and development could be attained.

He regretted that the Middle Belt, the umbilical cord of the nation and its stabiliser, according to him, was being endangered by the sinister happenings in the land.

Maku said: “Increasingly, there are signs to worry with recent developments because the crises have now become like diabetes that you continue to treat and treat and it never ends.”

The APGA scribe implored the media to initiate programmes where messages of peaceful coexistence could be disseminated regularly in different languages.

“I appealed to politicians to embrace the politics of peace as the nation draws closer to the 2019 general elections,” he added.

Maku tasked state governors, traditional rulers and community leaders to shed religious and ethnic toga and tackle decisively the farmers/herdsmen’s killings in the country.

The former minister called on his successor, Lai Mohammed, to revive the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) station in Akwanga, just as he enjoined the private and government-owned media outfits to be open to all shades of opinion for Nigerians to come up with better perspectives.

He urged government at all levels to always engage the opposition on contentious issues for good governance.

The APGA official went on: “We must not kill our nascent democracy, and if we must allow the people to participate and make it a true democracy like what we see the United States practise, then we must discuss and argue issues that affect us objectively.

“The American establishment believes in national discourse where various ideas and opinions of citizens are expressed on the media platforms and such media organisations are not pulled down.”