OMNIA’s Rev. Abare Kallah has been a strident voice for peace in Nigeria, both as a religious leader and as head of OMNIA’s Interfaith Peacemaker Teams Program. The article below appeared in one of Nigeria’s leading newspapers, “Leadership.”
March 7, 2019
Ahead of Saturday Gubernatorial and State Assembly elections, the National Peace Committee (NPC) on Wednesday organized a one day peace dialogue conference for political stakeholders in Gombe state.
Speaking at the event, the head of the secretariat of the NPC and Director Kukah Center, Rev. Attah Barkindo, said they were in Gombe to preach peace ahead of the forthcoming elections.
While calling on Nigerians to come out and conduct themselves in a peaceful manner during the election, he said that the mandate of the peace committee is to facilitate peaceful election and peaceful transition.
Barkindo said, the case of 2015 is quite different with 2019 because in 2015 only two major political parties, APC and PDP were active but now are 90 registered political parties with 70 presidential candidates that contested in the just concluded election.
According to him, the reason of preaching peace in 2019 is very crucial than previous years.
He then advised the people of Gombe to come out en-masse to exercise their political right and conduct themselves in peaceful manner.
In his response the North east zonal President, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Reverend Abare Kallah, said this is the first time that the country conducted an election that was being rated free, fair and credible by some international and domestic observers.
He urged churches, Mosques and the media to always preach peace in their various activities.
He further advised the committee to open offices across the 36 states so that people will be train on how to live in peace in the society.
Also speaking the secretary general of Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI ) in Gombe State, Alhaji Sale Danburam, urged the participants to ensure peace is maintain in their various communities, noting that without peace there will be no development.