AL-HAU24news

By Patience Aliyu
Jos.

The Institute for Peace and conflict resolution (IPCR) has held a stakeholder engagement to promote an early warning and early response approach (EWER) for conflict mitigation in Plateau.

The State-level engagement which saw the inauguration of Focal Persons into the Early Warning, Early Response group (EWER) for effective conflict mitigation in Plateau, was held on Thursday in Jos.

The news solution reports that the IPCR , in collaboration with ‘Peace Action for Rapid Transformative Nigerian Early Response (PARTNER) to build a conflict early warning early response (CEWER) system for Nigeria.

Prof.Joseph Golwa, Chairman of the event while elaborating on the need for non-violent approaches to conflict resolution stated that the EWER approach is to facilitate peace-building and social cohesion in the country.

“The PARTNER project is a collaborative effort sponsored by USAID to promote Early Warning and Early Response (EWER), peace-building and social cohesion in Nigeria.

“As far as we know, Nigeria is faced with numerous security challenges that are thwarting its unity, cohesion, stability, peaceful coexistence and inclusive development necessary for the pursuit of happiness of every citizen.

“Conflict prevention is a service that a single agency may not be able to achieve on its own, It will take a whole of society and whole of government approach to prevent violent conflict sustainably.
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“The collaboration between IPCR and PARTNER would deliver an effective conflict EWER system that will accommodate a robust partnership across the security and non-security stakeholders towards a comprehensive outcome,” he said.

Similarly, Mrs Kaneng Pam-Hworo, State Director of, the National Orientation Agency (NOA) while commending IPCR for the initiative, emphasised the need for the public to be quick to report suspicious events to relevant authorities rather than act nonchalantly or take laws into their hands.

“What we are talking about here is that we all need peace and we all need to see something and say something at the right time, remember, you must report to the right authorities, not just to anybody.

“We have traditional rulers in the communities, we have the police, we have the early warning, early response group and many other groups that you are expected to report to.

“Every community has a channel through which grievances or security issues are handled, please be sure to report to the right authorities not just to anybody.

“Take for instance the incident that happened in Heipang yesterday, there were already rumours trending in the public domain about possible reprisals or attacks but what was done about it? I urge us all to be more responsible towards ourselves and our society” she said.

For his part, Mr Chrisantus Defuna’an, Chief of Party for PARTNER explained that the reason for creating the EWER response groups is to have an effective team that can bridge the gap between early warning and early response for effective conflict mitigation.

“The essence of this activity is to strengthen EWER in Nigeria, and we intend to do that by vertical and horizontal linkages between organisations, public and private, as well as community, state and national level actors.

“To have an effective and impactful conflict prevention mechanism in Nigeria, we need to forget collaborations and coordination among partners, the essence of which, is to have an effective response group.

“We are going to train them on early response, and as we train them to position them, we will strengthen their capacity to know the dangers in the time lag between early warning signals and early response,” he said.

Our Reporter also reports that stakeholders were drawn from security agencies and community leaders and youths across various demographics.