ActionAid Nigeria, a non-governmental organisation, has called on the Federal and State Governments to promote culture and use it to tackle insurgency and banditry in the country.
Anicetus Atakpu, Resilience Programme Coordinator with ActionAid Nigeria, made the call while speaking with newsmen on the sideline of a cultural fiesta organised by ActionAid in collaboration with its implementing partner in Kogi, ‘Participation Initiative for Behavioural Change in Development’ to mark the 2021 Global Peace Day.
Atakpu said that the theme of the fiesta, ‘Promoting Harmonious Cohabitation through Culture’, was deliberately coined to promote culture above issues of ethnicity and religion that tend to divide Nigerians.
But he lamented that religion and tribe had remained the major centrifugal forces tearing the nation apart and militating against its development and advancement.
“Tribalism has played a very strong role in promoting violence, extremism and building conflicts in Nigeria.
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“The most recent is the farmers-herders conflict that has led to so many deaths. What we are doing today is to bring us back, to finding the solution to the problem itself,” he said.
According to him, “Culture is one good way of building harmony, and peaceful coexistence. We have been having this peaceful fiesta for the past three years, and we have come to restructure it.
“Rather than just gather youths to play, dance, we need to pass a message with it. We are trying to pass a message that will make people appreciate the oneness in us despite our cultural diversity.
“This year, we have launched the cultural peace fiesta, demonstrating our cultural diversity and making our youths and our teaming population understand that yes, we have diversity in culture, and our looks but we are still one.
“We can see ourselves as one, before we start thinking that we are Igala, Ebira, Okun and Bassa or many more. Culture will play more role in making us one than dividing us”.
He also noted that culture had been relegated to the background in the country in spite of the need to promote security, harmony and peaceful cohabitation through it.
“If the government can come up with a new model towards promoting our culture, the issue of kidnapping, insurgency, armed robbery will be a thing of the past,” he added.
