A ray of hope was raised on Thursday as warring parties in Southern Kaduna have agreed to an immediate cease of attacks, kidnappings and cattle rustling following a three-day peace summit.
The peace summit, which held in Kafanchan, was convened by the Nigeria Christian Pilgrims Commission (NCPC) in collaboration with friends of Southern Kaduna.
They agreed to a cease-fire, according to a communique read and signed by the Chairman of the communiqué Committee, Prof. Sunday Agang and his Co-Chairman Prof. Abdullahi Ashafa.
The stakeholders called for collaborative economic activities for the people of Southern Kaduna as a way of promoting harmonious and peaceful co-existence.
According to them, inciting statements and utterances that make people feel alienated should be avoided by all.
While noting that women and youth should be carried along in all formal peace processes, they added that there should be deliberate efforts to ‘recognise and celebrate our differences’.
Other resolutions included, stopping minors from grazing alone, farming on grazing routes and deliberate destruction of farm crops among others.
“The summit recommends that reprisal attacks have been identified as one of the causes of the killings in Southern Kaduna that appears like a justification of the attacks.
“The summit calls on all leaders at local, state and national levels to avoid all that bothers on appearance of taking sides and not being impartial judges.
“We also recommend that there are other serious observations that bother on the end of the killings and conflict that are to be conveyed to the federal and state governments.
“Issues perceived to be the causes of the festering violence will be communicated in separate letters to the President and the Governor of the State,” it added.
In his remarks earlier, Rev. Yakubu Pam, the Executive-Secretary of NCPC, solicited the continuous synergy and collaboration of all relevant stakeholders.
According to him, the state government will do well to make good its promise to implement all agreements reached at the summit.
He called on the state and federal governments to reach out to the victims of the crisis with interventions to enable them rebuild their lives.
Thereafter, the NCPC boss appealed to the state government to always involve the warring parties in decision making processes that affected them.
He appreciated the participants and stakeholders for availing themselves, urging them to quickly swing into action to ensure the purpose of the summit.(NAN)