The European Union (EU) has reiterated its willingness to continually support peace building initiatives in Bayelsa State and the entire Niger Delta region to fast track development and promote sustainable peace efforts carried out by the Bayelsa State Peace Architecture and her partners across the State.
This is as an EU delegation led by Ruben Alba, Head of Delegation to Nigeria and ECOWAS as well as Eric Piton, Programme Manager, European Union Foreign Policy Instrument, Dakar, Senegal was hosted by the Bayelsa State Peace Architecture for a four-day working visit to the State.
During a stakeholders dialogue session held at the Best Western private hall in Yenagoa, the visiting diplomats noted that their desire to support peace building efforts across the globe is anchored on the principle of promoting better society, justice for all, and fairness to truth and power.
Mr. Ruben Alba, leader of the EU delegation lauded the efforts of the Bayelsa State Peace Architecture in tackling the key drivers of violence such as substance abuse, cultism, communal crisis, environmental injustice, chieftaincy tussle, resource mobilization, allocation and distribution.
While calling for a greater partnership, Alba declared the possibility for an extension of the project for another six months to harvest more success stories.
He said the delegation is optimistic that within the next six months, the Bayelsa State Community Peace Commission bill would have seen the light of the day with a special commission dedicated to peace building and intervention for Early Warning and Early Response EWER approach to conflict resolution.
He charged the Bayelsa SPA to do more follow ups on the position paper of the Bayelsa State Commission Report on the Environment and clean up efforts while noting that environmental justice, political harmony remain key to sustainable peace in the Niger Delta.
Earlier, declaring the dialogue open, the Executive Chairman of the Bayelsa State Peace Architecture and Commissioner for Community Development, Hon. Alfred Watson Belemote, thanked the European Union delegation for finding time to visit the state.
He lauded Search for Common Ground, SDN and PIND for their partnership especially in the area of training and retraining, early warning signs and alternative dispute resolution mechanism by hosting peace agents from military, paramilitary CSO, FBO, media, professional groups, government agents, Youths, Women and community groups to brainstorm under the same roof on the possible ways to sustainable peace in Bayelsa State.
Presenting the Bayelsa State Peace Architecture (SPA) position paper on behalf of the group, Secretary of the Bayelsa State Peace Architecture, Dr. Inebaraton Preye disclosed that the Bayelsa State SPA has used a multi-sectorial approach from peace stakeholders to address the issues around Peace building, proffer concrete unbiased solutions with alternative verifiable methodology to sustainable life devoid of crime and criminality using the bottom-top approach, community centred patterns to mitigate the key drivers of criminalty in line with the CRINVIN initiative.
He noted that the team has used the systemic method to
confront the root causes of conflicts hence the deliberate visit to tertiary institutions to campaign against substance abuse, key stakeholders as well as initiate peace processes by solving over 200 conflict drivers in the past 18 months.
Inebaraton concluded by making the following specific requests to the European Union and her partners:
“The establishment of the Bayelsa State Community Peace Commission.
“The need to expand the scope of the project to at least 10 communities per LGA in Bayelsa State and extension of the project duration by another 18 months.
“Venturing into the campaign for peace before, during and after the 2027 polls in Bayelsa.
“The need for environmental justice with a right step to commence the implementation of findings from the carbon offset study and dialogue.
The dialogue had in attendance the Country Director, Search for Common Ground, Mr About Karno Ouattara, Director Programme, Mrs Gift Omoniwa, National Director on Conflict Analysis, Mr Andy Nwankwo, the Consortium Manager, Mr Chorbe Joshua.
Others are the Stakeholder Democracy Network, SDN Country Director, Florence Ibok Abasi, representatives from the Federal Ministry of Regional Development, Youths and other key stakeholders drawn across Nigeria.
