Peacebuilding, promotion should be continuous – Perm Sec

By Ochiaka Ugwu

Peacebuilding and peace promotion should be a continuous process for us to achieve greater peace in our society, the Permanent Secretary, Political and Economic Affairs, Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr. Gabriel T. Aduda has said.
Aduda who made this known in Abuja yesterday in a seminar on Building Capacity for Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution organized by National Peace Academy (NPA), a training wing of the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR) stated that capacity building for peace is important as it will help to promote peace and stability in the society.
His words, “It is important we engage in capacity building for peacebuilding and prevention as it will promote peace in our society. We have missed peacebuilding processes because we always base on short term and microwave approach”.
Aduda said that Peacebuilding is a continuous process and as a nation we need to move very fast to make sure that conflict does not escalate beyond reach.
“We need peace building in our communities, families, towns, village squares and schools. Conflict has gone beyond what we know and we must adopt updated method to tackle it. We must be passionate about peacebuilding to see beyond every other person in solving our problems” he said.
Also speaking, Director General of the Institute, Prof. Bakut T. Bakut who was represented by a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute, Dr. Joseph Ochogwu said the objective of the program was to meet Nigeria national capacity for peacebuilding and is important we build the capacities of these people to meet up with the new challenges.
Executive Director, Centre for Democracy and Development, Ms Idayat Hassan who was represented at the event noted that concerted efforts are required by all to achieve peace and development.
She said there must be evidence based peace capacity to will aid peace promotion.