6th August, 2015
The Gen. Martin Agwai-led Southern Kaduna Peace and Reconciliation Committee has urged the state government to evolve deliberate policies that would tackle youth unemployment.
The Committee made the call while submitting its report to Gov. Nasiru El-Rufa’i in Kaduna on Wednesday as it identified unemployment and drug abuse as major causes of violence and insecurity in the southern part of the state.
Agwai said the 16-man Committee had also identified indigene-settler dichotomy as another cause of problems in the southern part of the state.
He said the 2011 post-election violence was created by the unsettled lingering differences between the two warring factions in the southern part of the state.
Agwai, therefore, advised the state government to give equitable assistance to victims of the post-election violence and reconcile all affected communities.
He urged the state government to take measures that would restrict the proliferation of small arms in the southern zone and other parts of the state.
The committee advised the state government to gazette all grazing reserves for herdsmen to prevent clashes between farmers and herdsmen in the zone and other parts of the state.
El-Rufa’i, while receiving the report, commended members of the committee for the work done.
The governor promised to implement the recommendations of the committee “even without reading this report I am confident that government will find the report very useful.
“It may be the final key to peaceful co-existence in Kaduna State.”
El-Rufa’i said Agwai was selected to head the reconciliation committee based on his record in Nigerian Army and other national assignments.
The governor said that the crisis in the southern zone had lingered for long and needed to be addressed.
He assured that the state’s House of Assembly would soon pass a bill to establish a peace and reconciliation commission in the state.
El-Rufa’i inaugurated the Committee on July 1 to find lasting solution to the incessant killings in the southern part of the state and as government’s multi-dimensional approach to solve the problem.
The committee, headed by Agwai, former Chief of Defence Staff, had 30 days to unravel the cause or causes of the killings.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that statistics released by the National Emergency Management Agency shows that 23,890 people were displaced by communal clashes in Kaura, Kachia and Sanga local government areas of the state in 2014.