The Meeting which held in Calabar the state capital metropolis on Thursday featured a retinue of security personnel, traditional rulers, petty traders, religious leaders and development practitioners across the state etc.
The PIND Niger Delta Peace & Security Network Meeting (NDPSN) which was themed ‘Promoting Coordination among Stakeholders Working on Peace, Security and Development in the Niger Delta’, introduced the participants to a rich array of development narratives.
The facilitators, namely, Solomon Ndem, Ben Usang and Efio-Ita Nyok, highlighted security and peace issues including introducing participants to Foundation for Partnership Initiative in the Niger Delta (PIND) and overview of the NDPSN, mainstreaming peace building and conflict sensitivity, PIND SMS-based conflict early response system, discussions/reactions as well as post meeting activities and expectations.
During his facilitation, Usang emphasised the need for mainstreaming peace building in every facet of the Nigerian society especially the Niger Delta region whether in business, corporate environment, politics and otherwise. He particularly tasked the participants to be sensitive during everyday social relations with neighbours, colleagues, relatives, friends and even strangers.
Usang said that it is important that participants ‘take cognizance of conflict sensitivity in communications about ethnic narratives and the like’. Usang exemplified his presentation with certain Nigerian tribes who are wont to, through their traditional mode of communications, cast indigenes of neighbouring tribes as natural slaves to them. He said such a trend capable of stoking conflict is unacceptable.
Efio-Ita Nyok who walked the participants around the nitty gritty of PIND’s SMS-based Conflict Early Response System, on his part, argued that the ultimate essence of the SMS-based facility is to provide data which is sacrosanct in designing and implementing development interventions on conflict management as well as influence the formulation and implementation of public policy around security issues.
Nyok who informed the participants of the components of the integrated Early Warning System of PIND of comprising the following, field monitors, SMS based incident reporting platform, peace map, research/analysis and prevent team/councils, tasked them to commit to post event peacebuilding activities such as peace messaging and conflict mitigation.