Stakeholders have applauded USAID State2State focus on citizen/CSO engagement to improve the sub-national government’s ability to mitigate conflicts.
After a two-day FY2024 Quarter 4 Conflict Mitigation and Prevention Dialogue in Sokoto, participants resolved activities within the stipulated timeline on how to strengthen the stability of the state.
In his welcome address, State2State Team Lead, Dr Ladan Abdulkadir, said the dialogue objective will focus on the benefits of past engagements and the way forward.
According to him, “We have had a series of engagements and now, we want to see how this conflict mitigation and prevention dialogue have impacted on the citizenry and how it will continu toe post State2State engagement.”
State2State Conflict Specialist, Cosmos Dinee, dwelled extensively on day one interactive technical session with the topic, “Overview of conflicts issues identified in the Q4 Yr4 and their impacts on the peace and stability of the state.
The topic treated in the technical session two of day one of the dialogue is, the review process on the implementation of the Action plans from the Q4 Yr4 dialogue.
During the interaction on postmortem appraisal of the local government council elections, Sokoto State Independent Electoral Commission, SOSIEC, Executive Chairman, Alhaji Aliyu Sulaiman, thumbed up the commission for conducting a free, fair and successful election.
Represented by Abubakar Haliru Dange, Commissioner, Operations/Logistics, the executive chairman noted that, “against all apprehension, the council elections in the state was conducted peacefully, without any hitch.
“This was attested to, by all political parties that participated in the elections. The success of the election was attributed to the transparent manner, which SOSIEC carried out its responsibility.”
Day two technical sessions focused on participation and roles of women in conflict prevention and mitigation; CAF contextual update and, climaxed with development of action plan to address identified key drivers of conflict to maximise any escalation.
Learn2Read representative, Junaidu Umar Jabo (Sardauna Jabo), a Parent Community Leadership, PCL Specialist, in his remark, harped on scaling down the outcome of the dialogue and action plans to schools and communities.
Some of the recommendations to mitigate the recurrence of violent conflict and strengthen the stability of the state include, the government addressing issues of security; integrating citizens into early warning and approach; advocacy to relevant agencies/stakeholders and sensitization to schools on conflict prevention.
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