The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has warned of potential conflicts situations in Akwa Ibom state, pointing out that youths unemployment, poverty and other economic issues were some of the factors fueling arms conflicts including kidnappings, armed robbery and other violent crimes in the state.
Speaking in an interview in Uyo, the state capital, the USAID Team Lead in the state, Mr Borve Paago-Imabel, on Accountability, Transparency and Effectiveness in the state, expressed worry that such problem if allowed to fester, has the potential of threatening the prevailing peace ahead of the electioneering period leading up to the 2023 elections year.
He, therefore, advocated for a holistic action plan by government and non-state actors including the traditional and religious institutions to nib the problem in the bud.
He said: “Conflict assessment reveals a lot of issues in the state. One major issue that was found is the role of unemployment and that may directly lead to poverty, so people are agitating. Another one is land dispute, and there seem to be a lot of communal land disputes in the state which lead to a lot of issues, which are noticed across the various regions of the state.
“Another issue agitating is siting of Ibom Deep Seaport and what all these points to is that, it is only pertinent for government to sit down and re-plan its security and peacebuilding architecture to be able to address these types and levels of complaints. If you travel beyond the state, Akwa Ibom is adjudged as one of the most peaceful in Nigeria, but that doesn’t remove Akwa Ibom state from experiencing its measures of conflicts,
“The government have to be more deliberate in actualizing the industrialization policy which this present administration has designed for itself as an umbrella to cushioning the issues in the society.
The actualization of that policy will help to remove most of the vulnerable from the stage of idleness into a more meaningful state and they will no more be an element of destabilization, one of the issues in the report is that people value and respect traditional institutions as arbitrators in office, so the question is are we also giving the prominence to these institutions function that would mitigate conflicts in the state? It is a broad conflict but the government can handle it with the determination of the government at any point in time.
He explained that USAID has been working in collaboration with the state government to develop key strategies to provide a seamless implementation of key policies and programmes of the government, especially in the area of the budget.
“In terms of flashpoints there are more which you can’t say this is the worst conflict, except where there has been an exacerbation, so it only points to the worst situation of violence like when communities in Rivers and Akwa Ibom were affected and the roads were blocked for weeks, so those were the major flashpoints”.
What we are set up to do is to look at conflicts arising from failures in the implementation of the budget that should address citizens needs, so we are pointing to these Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs) to make their programmes to be more meaningful to relevant people.
“And, additionally, we are building capacities of other stakeholders to serve as conflicts mitigation platforms in the state and the next phase of which will be held in a week time is also bringing in-person drawn from the state councils of traditional rulers and other community persons including the states political parties because you can not talk about political conflicts without involving those parties, it will address the conflicts that arise from politics. Politics are supposed to define the means for development and where there’s a derailment, it means they have failed to align”, the USAID chief stressed.
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