Insecurity: Jonathan stresses need for dialogue

PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan has said that dialogue has an important role to play in the resolution of the security challenges currently dogging the nation.
He stated this on Friday in Sokoto while declaring open a two-day international conference on ‘Islam and the Fundamentals of Peaceful Coexistence in Nigeria’, jointly organised by the Sokoto State government and the Muslim World League (MWL) with headquarters in Mecca, Saudi-Arabia.
The event took place at the auditorium of the Sultan Muhammadu Maccido Institute for Qur’an and General Studies, Sokoto.
Jonathan urged the conveners of the conference to use their collective voice to teach the young ones that religion and harmony go hand in hand.
Represented by Vice-President Namadi Sambo, the president said the participants must emphasise dialogue as a means of resolving all forms of crisis and misunderstanding. He also stressed that in order for the nation to achieve religious harmony, Nigerians must shun individuals who use faith to cause violence.
He made a case for a committee to monitor the activities of preachers with a view to rectifying deviation by clerics, so as to avert the negative consequences of their actions. He said that on its part, the Federal Government had continued to work with the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council (NIREC) by taking seriously the advice of its members to the government.
 Also Governor Mu’Azu Babangida Aliyu of Niger State has said that greed, ignorance and social inequalities are behind the security challenges bedevilling the country.
He warned that unless urgent measures are taken to tackle the problems, they may degenerate into what other neighbouring Islamic nations of the world have been grappling with in recent times.
Aliyu made the comments in Minna on Friday at a three-day workshop of Chief Imams of North-Central zone in Minna.
He noted that the spate of insecurity in Nigeria was fast becoming like what obtains in other Muslim majority nations like Algeria, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Mali and Pakistan.
 “We must arrest the situation before the problem engulfs the whole country. We must also not allow a situation where foreign countries and interests get entrenched in what is happening in our domestic (affairs). In the religion of Islam, Sallam means ‘peace’, ‘moderation’. There cannot be extremism of killing people in the name of that religion.
Tribune