New WANEP Board Chairman pledges to sustain peace building campaigns

The newly appointed Chairman, Board of Directors for the West Africa Network for Peace Building (WANEP Nigeria), Mr. Kolawole Olatosimi has promised to energize and sustain the efforts of the peace and conflict resolution body by strengthening peace-building structures and collaborating with relevant organisations in Nigeria.

He spoke after taking over from his predecessor, Dr Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi at the WANEP 2023 General Assembly held in Abuja with the theme: “Strengthening Peacebuilding Structures: Towards an Enhanced State Citizens Relations in Nigeria”.

The General Assembly was preceded by a strategic meeting facilitated by Mercy Corps where it formally presented the Peace Action for Rapid and Transformative Nigerian Early Response (PARTNER) program to the WANEP Board of Director (BOD), Board of Trustees (BOT) and network members.

He described worrying the rising waves of resource-based, ethnic, and sectarian conflict, criminality, banditry and expanding violent extremism in the North Central and North-West zones of Nigeria that have made the regions increasingly insecure.

Participants acknowledged that multiple initiatives that seek to address the complex causes of violence, community and security responses to drivers and triggers are often piecemeal at best, and ineffectual at worst.

The participants said existing Early Warning and Early Response (EWER) systems suffer from slow responses, poor coordination, top-down mandates that limit community ownership, weak dispute resolution skills among responders, little political and financial investment as well and leadership structures that exclude women and youth.

The General Assembly resolved to carry out orientations for new members with all WANEP Nigeria policies to be reviewed and signed by the Board of Directors just as the Board and the Board of Trustees committed to ensuring a smooth transition of leadership from Mercy Corps to WANEP on the PARTNER Project funded by USAID.

Also speaking, the former BOD Chairman, Dr Akiyode-Afolabi commended the National Network Coordinator (WANEP Nigeria), Dr. Bridget Osakwe for her leadership and commitment to the organisation and her fantastic role in bringing her team together towards achieving the network’s objectives.

According to her: “there have been remarkable improvements during this period of my tenure; giant progress was made as WANEP became the leading peacebuilding organisation in Nigeria.

“Today we are discussing direct funding status from USAID and opened an office in Abuja. We can’t count our successes in conflict prevention and peacebuilding. However, more still needs to be done in terms of increasing the number of members, capacity building for members and resource mobilisation.”

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