THE IMPERATIVE OF PEACEFUL CO-EXISTENCE

At the National Conference on Conflict Resolution in Some Central States of Nigeria

NIPSS, Kuru, 23 January, 2002

I am pleased to welcome Your Excellencies, Your Royal Highnesses, and a most distinguished and representative array of citizens of this cluster of seven States of our Federation, whose peace and security we meet to discuss and reinforce.

I am particularly delighted to welcome two former Heads of State, General Yakubu Gowon, and General Abdulsalami Abubakar, who have graciously accepted our invitation to sit with us at this Retreat, and, along with everyone else in this hall, attempt to find solutions to the worrying specter of violence and insecurity which haunts whole communities in this region.

I am also most impressed by the overwhelming response of all those who have been invited to attend this Retreat, either as participants, presenters, discussants or chairmen. This response has vindicated our belief that this Retreat is both timely and appropriate.

Distinguished ladies and Gentlemen, God in His infinite wisdom has put us to live together, first in the unit of our families, then as members of our communities, and finally as citizens of our nation. That is an act of God and anybody who fights against that, fights against God, and he cannot succeed.

As a society, we have no prospects of developing or progressing unless we have peace. Peace is a fundamental right which we owe to all our fellow citizens and who in turn owe it to us, individually.

Our commitment to rebuild Nigeria democratically is predicated on peace. Thus, it was particularly painful and devastating for our expectations, when in less than a year after the celebrated return of democracy, our confidences were shaken by the experience of violent confrontations in Kaduna State. In terms of lost lives and property, the magnitude of this event was unprecedented since the civil war threatened to destroy our country.

More tragic still, were the other communal clashes that followed the sad episode of Kaduna, as many of you may have personally experienced. The frequency and ferocity with which these clashes have spread across the country have made many Nigerians to wonder to what extent the generality of Nigerians are appreciative of our hard won democracy.

Coexisting with fellow human beings as we all know, even among our immediate family, entail difficulties which often lead to friction. But it is an essential element of the definition of civilization, that societies organise themselves to keep friction among its members to the absolute minimum. Progress, development, democracy and maturity, all lie in not allowing such friction to threaten peaceful coexistence. As rational creatures, we are capable - and we should - keep faith with mutual respect, upon which we can establish norms for managing our differences, so that they do not degenerate into violence.

Our national Constitution is one such instrument for managing our differences. This Constitution binds all of us together, and grants each and every one of us the freedom to live and to enjoy free citizenship status anywhere, on the soil demarcated as the country of Nigeria. Hardly any of us can deny that he or she has enjoyed this fundamental right as we move about within this country that we call our own. So we all have a duty at all times, first to remember, then to fully respect this right for every other Nigerian, whomever, whenever, and wherever. And I am confident that we all can do this consistently without prejudice to our historical claims to any portion of this land. For this is the land which God in His infinite wisdom, has put all of us. This is now the land of our common destiny. And it is the land on which all of us are engaged in building a civilised society in a great nation, for ourselves, for our children, and for all future generations.

It is thus imperative that we expunge the attitude of regarding any fellow Nigerian as a ‘settler’ in our country, where he or she is a citizen by birth. And there can be no justification whatsoever, to think of - or begin to try - evicting any such persons designated as ‘settler’.

This Retreat was conceived in the context of some meetings and consultations with Governors and other leaders of four of the States represented here, after it became clear that the search for lasting peace and security in some States which have experienced, and which continue to experience, devastating communal conflicts will require a wider forum, and a deeper understanding of the sources and causes of these conflicts. In the course of those meetings and consultations, certain common elements and peculiarities of those conflicts became clear.

One of them is the obvious fact that conflicts involving communities who have lived peacefully with each other for decades or even centuries were threatening to become endemic, a situation which clearly is unacceptable and intolerable. Another fact, which emerged, is that these conflicts have not, and cannot produce winners. There can only losers. There is, also, the need to isolate the sources, causes and dynamics of these conflicts, and examine them in the context of our structural and institutional arrangements as a nation.

Another important fact is that these conflicts are conceived and executed by persons in all strata of society, and if they are made by men and women, then the solutions for them can - and must - be found by men and women. I dare say that there is no forum better equipped to find these solutions than this one.

Our hope is that this Retreat lay bare all the facts regarding communal conflicts in these seven States. We need the courage to identify the real causes of recurring communal conflicts without playing to the gallery. And we need the courage to match these conflicts with their solutions. While I have no illusions that this Retreat will put an end to these conflicts immediately, I strongly believe that in this Hall, we can identify concrete steps which can and should secure for the people in this region of our country, a solid foundation for peace and security in the nearest future.

I am sure that there is not a soul in this Hall who believes that endemic conflict is preferable to peace and security, whatever the goal. I do believe that a major source of these conflicts is traceable to elite competition and maneuvers for power and control, fear of domination and lack of integration amongst communities who have lived together for a century or more.

Our people in this area have more than enough problems with poverty and disease, and they certainly can be spared the additional burden of playing foot soldiers to the designs and machinations of cynical power-seekers. It is evil, to say the least, for anyone to take advantage of the restiveness of youth in a situation of gross unemployment. When I see how the lives of our people have been crippled and devastated by these conflicts, I have even less reasons to offer apologies for these comments. I am yet to be convinced that one Muslim or Christian has now been placed in a superior position as a result of the religious conflicts in Kaduna or Jos. Nor has any ethnic group in Nassarawa, Benue, Taraba or any part of this country succeeded in asserting a superiority in terms of securing its interests, vis-a-vis other communities.

These conflicts leave everyone with a lot of grief, hate, fear and insecurity as constant companions. No one can win in conflicts of this nature. Even where it appears that one community has secured a brief victory, it retreats to live in fear that its illusionary victory may be snatched, and it will in turn be the loser tomorrow. To live in hate and perpetual fear is a terrible end to design for our people. And any government which does not deploy all its attention and resources towards relieving our communities of their current siege under these evil designs, is not doing justice to the mandate freely given by the people.

Distinguished participants, one unique element of this Retreat is the involvement of prominent citizens and public officers from all the seven States. This strategy of bringing together key persons who are well-placed to facilitate an end to the current unhappy state of existence of our people is anchored in the belief that we can establish an understanding and a framework to which we will all commit ourselves. The Retreat has been structured in such a way as to allow as wide understanding of the general features, and peculiar nature of these conflicts, as well as leave room for inputs and discussions from everyone.

You would have noticed that the Programme is rather demanding, this is because we believe that all participants at this Retreat are fully aware of its historic burden, which is to reverse a trend that threatens to condemn hundreds of thousands of Nigerians to living in a state of perpetual insecurity. Let me say again that I have absolute confidence that this Retreat can achieve this. What we require is a deep search into our individual and collective consciences, and to establish whether, in our private and public lives, we cannot create those necessary conditions which allow our people to live in peace with their dignity intact.

You will also note that we have selected themes and issues which appear central to those conflicts. It must be baffling to an outsider that we violently quarrel because of such things as land, our faiths, or for one public office or the other, in a nation so well endowed as to allow everyone enough room to search for his livelihood without fighting his neighbour. The poverty of our people can only be compounded if they impoverished each other with energies which they should deploy towards development.

Leadership itself becomes distracted from its real goals, and becomes bogged down with managing increasing fragmentation of the populace. In many instances, governments become part of the problem in the eyes of many people, and therefore lose both credibility and efficacy to effect positive change.

Ladies and gentlemen, I hope that this Retreat will provide a solid basis for understanding some of the many disturbing questions which these recent conflicts have forced upon us. For instance, we do need to understand why the levels of integration of our communities, in a nation that has existed for a century, are still so low as to be so easily threatened by the most parochial of causes. In a world that is becoming irretrievably globalised, it appears that our people are receding further and further into tribal and ethnic enclaves.

Many citizens are threatened and denied their God-given and constitutionally-guaranteed right to live and earn their living anywhere in our nation by such monstrosities as "non-indigene”, "stranger", "native” or “settler" constructions which create huge barriers between our people. Very often, the irony is lost to our people that every Nigerian is both an "Indigene" and a "settler" and we pay a huge price when we ignore this fact, for, among others, it exposes all of us, and all our primordial loyalties, to the evils which it generates. Another destructive impact of this monstrous notions is that it militates against the imperatives of the integration of our national economy, which demands that men and capital must be allowed to move freely and grow wherever they choose.

Another question which I hope this Retreat will answer is related to the worrying tendency for conflicts to explode and involve huge numbers in our communities with seeming ease, in spite of the huge array of legal and institutional mechanisms we have in place to handle conflicts. Clearly, something is wrong when hundreds or thousands of people take up arms against one another, sometimes over protracted periods, and in the process, plant hate and fear in the minds of whole communities, which will take many years to erase. Are our institutions for maintaining peace and security inadequate, or are we dealing with wholly new problems that require that we assess them from entirely new perspectives?.

There are many questions we will try and find answers to in the next three days. For now, let me state that we will never tire in our endeavour to find lasting peace and security for every Nigerian. This Retreat is only one avenue through which we hope to extend to the Nigerian people, the real dividends of democracy, to wit, the right to live in peace and harmony with our neighbours whoever and wherever they are.

As you are aware, the Advisory Panel on National Security has already commenced its work, and I am particularly delighted that some members of that Panel are attending this Retreat because it will expose them to some of the real problems they will examine and advise upon. The Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Inter-Communal Conflicts in Benue, Nassarawa, Plateau and Taraba States has also been set up, and is about to commence its work. You are aware that a Committee on the Provisions and Practice of Citizenship in Nigeria composed of six Governors and five Ministers has started its work.

All these represent efforts to find solutions to some of the questions we shall try to answer here, and we have very high expectations that they will all contribute to our resolve to create a nation free from unnecessary fear and conflict. Let me also state that another Retreat on Violence and the Electoral Process involving key players in our national politics has been scheduled for next month.

Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you once again for participating in this Retreat. I will only request that you stay with us through its entire programme, and contribute frankly and sincerely towards the achievement of its objectives. Let me also thank the Director-General of the NIPSS, Major-General Joe Garba, for placing the excellent facilities of the Institute at our disposal.

I wish you a most productive Retreat. May God guide our thoughts and deeds as we serve our fellow countrymen and women.

I thank you.