As Nigeria goes to the polls on the 25th of February 2023 to elect its next president and members of the national assembly and also on the 11th of March, 2023 to elect governors and members of state houses of assembly, political activities have heightened with politicians pitching their their last ditch efforts to sway voters to their sides.
The history of Nigerian elections, since its independence in 1960, is riddled with violence, voter repression and suppression, partriachy, monetization and militarization of political campaigns that claimed thousands of lives and destroyed property worth billions of dollars in its wake.
A repeat of political violence in 2023, as seen in past election cycles, may spell doom for Nigeria as the country ostensibly battles with secessionist threats, sectarian violence, religious extremism, polarization, insurgency, militancy, banditry, thuggery, proliferation of small arms and light weapons and their cohorts hence the need for concerted efforts to stem tide.
In keeping with its mandate, Omnia Institute for Contextual Leadership rose to this pivotal occasion by organizing a workshop to equip interfaith leader teams in order to champion the cause of peaceful conduct of 2023 elections titled 'Election Integrity and Strenthening Democracy."
As a nongovernmental, non partisan, not-for-profit and non-religious body, Omnia Institute for Contextual Leadership drew participants across every divide including political parties, religions, gender and a host of ethnic nationalities within Gombe State in Northeastern Nigeria.
The Country Representative (Nigeria) Omnia Institute for Contextual Leadership, Rev. Dr. Abare Kallah says, "as an institute that raises peace builders in the land, we feel we have a lot to contribute as interfaith peacemaker teams to bring peace and contribute to the integrity of Nigeria's election and strengthen our democracy."
"In the series of our training, especially the one we had in October down to November, we discovered that some of the issues that are coming from the bottom have to do with concerns for the integrity of the elections and then we felt we needed to bring the leadership of our teams up to fifty."
As an astute community leader, Dr. Kallah believes that with the composition of participants such as pastors, imams, youth, women, traditional and opinion leaders at the workshop the desired peace narrative would be pushed faster and further permeating the uttermost parts of rural settlements that are mostly hard to reach due to lack of communication infrastructure.
He equally believes that this stage of equipping interfaith teams is critical as highlighted both in his speech and interview with pressmen, "those who are ready for peace should be more prepared than those who go for war because peacemakers are definitely people who are courageous."
He added that, "You don't make peace when you are a coward. Yes, those who go for war depend on their weapons of mass destruction but peacemakers work towards changing the minds of hard people, paralysing them from whatever wicked or violent attitude that may come."
"We have to be prepared and part of the preparation is to bring people together, create awareness like this. Sacrifices must be made to ensure that we do what is expected for peace to continue to reign in Nigeria," he added.
To underscore the importance of investments Omnia is making towards achieving a peaceful 2023 general polls in Nigeria, a board member of Omnia Institute, Rev. Dr. Isaac Laudarji says, "This is part of the product of the investments we have been making over the years to pursue peaceful existence in so many ways especially working with people from the grassroots and trying to mobilize them to understand that thick below their skin, is a common identity that we all have as human beings."
"We are first humans before we are anything else and if that humanity of ours is manifested in the way we treat one another and relate with one another then we are likely to be more productive, we are likely going to be more useful to ourselves and to the larger community because we will invest in the greater good of the community."
"For me this is the ultimate because if we live in peace everything else will work, without peace, nothing will work," he said.
Officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and National Orientation Agency (NOA) who served as resource persons at the workshop laud the efforts of Omnia Institute in putting together the program to deconstruct mental strongholds that trigger outburst of violence before, during and after elections.
Participants at the workshop also say they have learnt a whole lot of new techniques for preaching the undiluted message of peace and peaceful coexistence in their communties.
By collapsing into discussion groups based on their local governments, participants were able to pencil down the peculiarities of their localities and when the committee of the whole reconvened, leaders of discussion groups made presentation on how they planned to construct their message of peace and what cooperations they would seek in order to address those peculiarities.
Omnia institute hopes to achieve seamless transmission of its message of peace to the farthest ends of Nigeria by undertaking robust methods suitable for every political locality and landscape, in the words of Dr. Kallah.
"We are working on neutrality of our approach. Yes we know that in politics the competition is so high, the vested interests are there but Omnia preaches peace, Omnia preaches non-violence, Omnia addresses issues of damnation, religious extremism and all kinds of violence and patriarchy related issues."
"Part of our approach is to stand on our neutrality, maintain our principles and values so that we will not in any way seem to side or hurt anybody. The values of equity, the values of justice, the values of inclusiveness these are what we would love to see irrespective of one's tribe or religious affiliations."
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