The Minister of Foreign Affair, Geoffrey Onyeama, has expressed concern over the state of security in Nigeria, advising his compatriots to do away with religion and communal beliefs which he said have become tools of manipulation and conflict in society.
Newsbreak.ng reports that the minister disclosed this on Tuesday, when he spoke alongside other stakeholders, during the opening of the National Policy Roundtable on the Network of Policy Makers to support reconciliation, peace and security in Nigeria.
According to Onyeama, the communal lifestyle of Africans is largely expressed in their religious beliefs, which facilitates solidarity, togetherness, and neighbourliness.
“Regrettably, religion and communal living are painted as fundamentals that are inimical to peace, security and development,” he said.
He noted that in the political history of post-independence, Nigeria was awash with tragic instances of violent conflict and acrimony that had erupted as a result of the manipulation of religion and other identity markers such as the ethnic market.
On her part, the Minister of Women Affairs, Dame Pauline Tallen, while drawing illustrations on the recent bombing of train in Kaduna, said that the insecurities faced in the country have not been successfully addressed because of the “sheer” neglect of women in the leadership and policy making progress.
Tallen, while reeling out some of the importance of women and pointing that women have been over time neglected from the day to day running of the country, maintained that women possesses the necessary capabilities to bring to a halt the ongoing insecurity menace ravaging the nation.
Her words: “Women play a critical role in the home, in society and even in conflict resolution. Any successful mediation that will be successful and bring about meaningful peace, women must be involved and when they are involved, we always get better results. Ignoring who may participate on the decision table is what is causing the problem we are facing. We cannot keep doing the same thing over and over without getting a positive result and wouldn’t change strategy.
“We must learn to admit and to address some of these security problems by looking inwardly and changing our strategy. Two major things I want to address today: the two religious religions we practice in Nigeria preaches peace and love and for me love is the greatest of all because God is love himself. If you don’t have love in you, then you don’t know God. And if we truly love our country, if we truly love one another as children of God, no one should raise arms against the other. Because if I love you, I wouldn’t hurt you. I wouldn’t do anything that will hurt like you.
“So our problem as a nation is the absence of love. We don’t love one another. We don’t even love our nature. But God loves this nature beyond one’s imagination. If not for God, we wouldn’t be sitting here today. God has shown us so much love. All we need to do is reciprocate and love one another and be sincere. If we are sincere to ourselves, by now we should have found a solution to our security problem, but there is no sincerity and we must go back to the drawing board. We must touch our hearts and ask ourselves if we really love this country?
“President Muhammadu Buhari is not a magicians He alone cannot do it. The services chiefs cannot do it alone. All of us are involved but we keep going around and around without telling ourselves the truth. Without facing the true reality. Lives are lost every day. A lot of innocent people will just cry and speak against us if we don’t change our strategy and become honest and sincere.
“Our security architecture must go back to the drawing board and re-strategize. The hoodlums we have, all Boko Haram, all the kidnappers, they have mother’s in every community. We have community leaders. We should be able to be sincere and nip some of the security problems in the bud starting from our homes, to our communities, and the larger society. A clear example is the recent train attack. We’ve been told that it is the same village. The same attack takes place in the same village not twice not thrice it consecutively happened. And yet we don’t know what to do. Something is wrong.”
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