Follow Us on Google
By Chukwudi Nweje
The Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, (NIPR) is set to hold a peace and security summit on national integration.
President and Chairman, Council of NIPR, Mallam Mukhtar Sirajo, disclosed this when he led a delegation on a visit to The Sun City office, Ikeja Lagos, yesterday.
He said the body decided to hold the summit after its nationwide consultations showed that no part of the country wanted to leave the union.
“We have come up with the idea of organising a Peace and Security Citizens Summit on National Integration, we want it to be a platform where Nigerians from across the country will come together and begin to talk so that we can restart the conversation to restore confidence among ourselves. We believe that it will be a very veritable restarting point for the people of this country to begin to reawaken themselves to the fact that this country can be better, maybe we can launch a national rebirth from there, it is a process and we believe that once that is started there will be no stopping it.”
He said the proposed summit which is supported by no less than 37 different organisations, professionals and socio-cultural groups would be nothing like past government organised talk shops, which he said were diversionary as it would offer Nigerians a platform to sit and discuss their grievances amicably.
“It is going to be different, I know that we have had various talk shops in the past organised by the government, but you will agree with me that they are mostly products of political decisions that were designed to be nothing better than diversionary measures that will allow people to be talking while the politicians will be doing their thing. This is different because we want everybody to come on board. We have enlisted the buy-in of Nigerians across the board, individuals, entities and all people of goodwill. As of the last count, we have the buy-in of about 37 different organisations, professionals, socio-cultural including Afenifere, Middle Belt Forum, Arewa Consultative Forum, Niger Delta. We have seen all the socio-cultural groups except Ohanaeze Ndigbo which we are seeing next week. The civil society groups including the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), Council of Mediators and Conciliators, Nigerian in Diaspora, National Orientation Agency (NOA), National Council for Arts and Culture and many more. We are waiting to hear from the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA, we have reached out to the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Nigerian Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs.”
