Members of the National Peace Committee led by its Chairman and a former Head of State, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar (retd), on Friday had a closed-door meeting with Kaduna State Governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, over the killings in the Southern part of the state.
The meeting was part of the efforts to tackle the incessant killings in that part of the state where hundreds of lives had been lost and property worth millions of naira destroyed.
Other eminent Nigerians, who were also at the meeting, include the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar lll; the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Hassan Kukah and Cardinal John Onaiyekan.
The NPC, Abdulsalami said, was on a fact-finding mission to the state over the disturbing killings and to look at how to proffer a lasting solution to the attacks.
Addressing newsmen shortly after the meeting, the former Head of State said the committee would meet other stakeholders, religious leaders, local chiefs in Southern Kaduna and as well as visit the sites where the attacks took place.
He said, “There is no religion on earth or anywhere that preaches violence. So this is why we are here. One of the points that the governor drew our attention to is the way people take law into their hands and go scot free. And this impunity must be checked. These are some of the issues we discussed.”
On his part, Kukah called on the state government to do all it could to restore peace in the state.
He said, “I think what the people of Kaduna State, including the government should be doing now is to look into how we can achieve peace and development and I think that is the reason we have democracy.
“What is going on now is a very sad phase in our history, but I believe that we can get over it and we will get over it and come out much stronger and committed to peace.”
Meanwhile, a Professor of Africana Studies and History, Olufemi Vaughan, on Wednesday, called on the Federal Government to set up an independent agency that would carry out a detailed analysis of the causes of the various religious crisis in the country and recommend how best to address them.
Vaughan, who is also a Senior Editor of the Oxford Research Encyclopaedia in African History, and co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Nigeria, said that while the issue of religious crisis had been going on for a long time in the country particularly in the north, the government had yet to address the root causes of the problem.
He said, “The issue of religious crisis is a major problem in Nigeria and as a country, we are not doing enough to address this problem.
“We need to look at the root causes of this problem. There are lots of killings going on.”
Source :punch
