MUSLIMS AND CHRISTIANS NEED Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) TO SOLVE THE BOKO HARAM ISSUES IN NIGERIA. Part 3
As the President-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs [NSCIA], I serve as a Co-Chairman of the Council while the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria [CAN] serves as the other Co-Chairman. The Council is planning to roll out its programme of activities next year, with state offices, enlightenment campaigns and inter-faith dialogues.
I am optimistic that it will contribute positively towards the attainment of peace and religious harmony in Nigeria. I am also confident that our friends and well-wishers, both within and outside Nigeria, will join us in this noble undertaking.
Finally, I wish to avail myself of this opportunity to assure you all of the determination of the religious leadership in Nigeria to make Muslim-Christian conflicts a thing of the past. There are of course great challenges ahead but there is also hope; the hope of greater understanding and co-operation, and the promise of establishing a healthy foundation for Muslim-Christian relations in Nigeria. There could be no better demonstration of Nigeria’s resolve to institutionalize tolerance and harmonious co-existence than this noble gesture”.
Good speech there by His Eminence and I’m sure that this must have earned him a standing ovation. But what is happening today in our dear country is far beyond tolerance and harmonious co existence. The insurgence of the Boko haram sect is a new challenge that is threatening our harmonious co-existence. And we cannot in any way underrate the effects of conflicts in our society. Nothing can be done in a society devoid of peace, and using violence, as a means to solving problems, does not solve problems, rather it creates more problems. It is our collective responsibility that we all pursue peace.
As a Nation, we need peace now more than ever, and that does not come easy. Therefore, there must be a deliberate effort to achieve it. The more the society grows the more complex it becomes and the more it needs peace. There is nothing that affects a society more than the lack of peace and we must do everything possible within our power to ensure that peace reigns in our society and at whatever levels in the community. A lot of people have suggested a lot of solutions to the President and people of Nigeria on various ways this problem could be solved.
Listed below are some of the head lines in our national newspapers on this issue.
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The Reconciliation and Conflict resolution/ Mediation Centre, believes strongly that the presence of a neutral individual or group who will act as a facilitator and a catalyst will open up a clear communications with this sect. We acknowledged that the Federal Government and the security forces at the moment are doing a great job on the legal aspect of the problem, but stressed that our organization as mediators and facilitators can talk about peace in the aspect that everybody would know that we could stand in as a third party instead of having our prisons being congested.
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. (Albert Einstein).
We expresses confidence that Reconciliation and Conflict resolution/ Mediation Centre, can handle the dreaded Islamic sect who have been terrorizing our country and killing innocent people for so long. Even though the group has done so much havoc, they would, as a matter of necessity, come out for negotiation on a neutral platform. We chat a way of resolving disputes without necessarily going through the prolonged process of the legal system.
Considering the constant crises rocking our societies in various nations and continents of the world today, from the home front to the corporate world and at every level of governance, it is imperative that we employ alternative ways of resolving our differences and generating the much lacking societal peace and tranquility within our geographical locations.
We described the mediator’s role at RCRMC to be that of a third party, who gathers useful information from both parties, especially where it becomes difficult to bring the conflicting parties in a dispute together because of injury they incurred.
Reconciliation and Conflict resolution/ Mediation Centre draws resource persons from Nigeria and abroad among community leaders, Clergies, Imams, Military, Para military, administrators, non governmental organizations (NGO) and champion of industries, on how best to handle and resolve the conflicts and challenges that characterize the department, organizations, families and nation at large. As the world grapples with the issue of unrest, crises and terrorism, these cooperate institutions deem it fit to find alternative means to tackle this global monster and that is our mission. We have personnel’s that cut across all classes of individuals and institutions such as: traditional institutions, clergies, educationists, bankers, champion of industries, politicians, government officials, self-employed, medical practitioners, farmers, transporters and more.
We pointed out that both the Bible and the Quran promotes dialogue. The Quran 2 v 265 says. ‘There is no compulsion in religion’, and the Bible says in the book of John 6 v 44, “No one comes to me except my father draws him”. There are also many other verses in both the Bible and Quran that promotes dialogue, so why then are we destroying and killing one another for not being Muslims or Christians? What do we gain by killing one another over religious differences?
The Muslim doctrines and the Christian doctrines cannot be changed now; the only thing that can be done is for us to develop our knowledge by learning more and having peaceful intellectual discussions on matters of comparative religion instead of promoting hate over religious differences.
We must learn to embrace dialogue as the only reasonable way to handle our differences. Religious crisis is a simple matter to understand, quite straight forward, but resolving it is a huge and complicated issue as evidenced through history. We gave a little analysis on what RCRMC is and why we believes that it is the ideal process of solving the Boko Haram issue if applied properly and most importantly where the conflicting parties need a kind of settlement.
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