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03.09.2014 Feature Article

My Thought About Peace In Nigeria

My Thought About Peace In Nigeria
03.09.2014 LISTEN

History teaches us that unity is strength, and cautions us to submerge and overcome our differences in the quest for common goals, to strive, with all our combined strength, for the path to true African brotherhood and unity, said Haile Selassie.

A peaceful society would do everything within its coffers to keep and maintain peace. This is not new to Nigerians. We have always been a peaceful people and can still maintain peace no matter the contrary.

We cannot hijack peace and replace it with wars and chaos where none should exist. We have known that war and chaos are not part of human beings but are created by greed and shortsightedness, hence combativeness and belligerent attributes which will not better our lots or lift us to the 21st century humanity.

Political turbulence will never have pay-offs except regret and sorrows. If our pasts were turbulently violent, our future should be better than our past, if we can make our today a good place for us all.


We are not beasts that we will be hatching Chimpanzee aggression that do not support our neighbours, but attack our collective responsibilities. All over the world, people are yearning for peace and we would not be a better people if combatant schools are erected in the nooks and crannies of our environment because of politics.

It should not be commonplace if we sack our tomorrow and call such ruinous habit politics. We are one no matter our different political interests. We should see ourselves as neighbouring communities that do not make wars with each other.

Our country was not founded out of the dust of wars, so it behooves on us to make it a peaceful system. Much as we knew, even an organization like the European Union which was founded after the Second World War, has been able to avert chaos on its continent, we can.

We will pay the price if we refuse to make peace today. We cannot continue with the sharp increase in political casualties following one interest or the other, which we invariably know that we will pay the negative price if we do not take a decision and fan the embers of peace initiatives, instead of fanning the embers of war initiatives, which the end product will be sorrows and totters.

If we notice, our political fights are taking place in our villages, towns and cities, public places and market places with upward disturbing escalating traits. We cannot afford to have political Taliban, when we know that in a place like Afghanistan were exists the gruesome Taliban; life has not been easy for the citizens of that country. Taliban anywhere causes injuries and deaths of about 80% of a country, state, council they are.

In 1988–1989 reportedly, there was the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan without a reached agreement between pro and anti-government forces inside the country. The aftermath was the terrible (un)civil war that ensued.

Today, some of us in Nigeria are doing everything within our reach to make our country a place that we can call our own, but just like the Soviet Union reportedly did everything to bring peace in Afghanistan, but the West mounted the contrary, so also some persons are thwarting the peace moves in our country for their self-centered interests.

For how long shall we continue to live like two warring brothers? All of us should not continue in turmoil. The perceived divisions in our country can only grind the efforts we are making for a better Nigeria if the divisions continue to stay funded. We should learn lessons from the comment by one Gabriel Carlyle in “Afghans pay price for US refusal to make peace” on the happenings in Afghanistan.

Carlyle said: With the US set to keep 9,800 troops in Afghanistan in 2015, following the 'end of combat operations' at the end of this year, and both Afghan presidential hopefuls committed to signing a long-term 'security' arrangement with the US within a month of taking office – ensuring the continued flow of US funds, without which the Afghan army and police would collapse – the war looks set to grind on for a good deal longer yet.

We must make Nigeria a peaceful place, unlike in "War is not part and parcel of human nature", where Douglas P Fry inter alia writes as if speaking in idiom about our country thus: Over recent centuries, non-Western peoples have been portrayed as 'primitive' and 'savage' and such views have facilitated the atrocities of enslavement, displacement and annihilation directed against indigenous peoples during colonialism and subsequently. The existence of peaceful peoples and peace systems might not be anticipated as they contradict the familiar stereotypes of uncivilised and warlike savages.

Odimegwu Onwumere, a Poet/Writer, writes from Rivers State.

Tel: +2348032552855
Email: [email protected]
www.odimegwuonwumere.wordpress.com

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