Interfaith Mediation Center Advocates For Investment In Peace

NEWSDAILYNIGERIA: The Founder, Interfaith Mediation Center, Imam Muhammad Ashafa has called on government and all relevant stakeholders to invest in peace procedures and programs.

He made the call while speaking with our correspondent in Kaduna on the overall achievements and some challenges the Center has recorded in the past.

Imam Ashafa, who is also an Ambassador of the Commonwealth and a member, board of trustees of the Centre said, government and non state actors should not wait for conflicts to happen before they begin to broker peace, such procedures should be put in place to avoid clashes from the onset.

He disclosed that, himself and Pastor James Wiye, who is the Co-founder of the Center have traveled round Nigeria and abroad to broker peace by creating peace models which have recorded positive results.

According to him, the Imam and Pastor alliance
has yielded positive results. “We have traveled to about 75 countries of the world, we were invited by governments of the Countries to help them share our peace model during crisis which by the grace of God were all successful.”

ACHIEVEMENTS

The Imam mentioned that, Kaduna state today, where both the Imam and Pastor reside have enjoyed peaceful coexistence for many years.

“To help stop religious crisis in Kaduna, we had to create a template on how to engage the Muslim and the Christian community, and also engaged the JNI and CAN where these leaders came together and worked on a document refered to as ‘Kaduna Peace Declaration Of Religious Leaders’ in 2002 and that document
worked and kept Kaduna in peace for 9 good years. There was no crisis and blood shedding.”

“In the Southern part of Plateau state, where as a result of the crisis, a State of Emergency was declared in Shendam, the Governor at that time, invited us in 2002 to help manage the ethno- religious crisis and we succeed and brokered peace, and after the signing of the peace declaration document in Yelwan Shendam, which they called ‘Peace Affirmation’, the Muslim and Christian community since 2006 up till date, have been enjoying sustained peace for 19 good years even though some parts of Plateau still experience crisis but not Yelwan shendam.”

“Another success story is the creation of Peace Journalism Network which is a group of media practitioners’ network who also made huge contributions in covering and disseminating peace stories in order to promote peaceful coexistence.”

Imam Ashafa also narrated how they travelled around the world to present the Imam-Pastor peace model which was used in most occasions and peace was achieved.

“I can’t mention all the countries that we visited and the approach we used to broker peace, but I remember our trip to Chad because we loved the experience. We were at the office of the National mediator where we trained civil societies, traditional leaders, community leaders and presented a model to them which recorded huge success.”

“While in Sudan, both Southern and Northern Sudan, we facilitated building the bridges during the crisis, our contribution was so immense that anytime you visit Sudan, the story of the Imam and the pastor from Nigeria was told by their citizens.”

“When we were invited to Iraq to meet with the various religious leaders of the Shiite, Sunnis and the minority Christians to interact peacefully, we were able to achieve a lot”.

He further stated that they had travelled to as many as seventy five countries around the world to preach and encourage people coexistence. A few of them are China, United Kingdom, Somalia, South Africa, Kenya and many others that are too numerous to mention.

CHALLENGES

Pastor Wiye spoke on their challenges, he lamented the lack of will by some stakeholders to promote peace, saying, just a statement from a leader, be it political or religious leaders can take them backwards and ruin all the successes they have achieved within a short period of time.

“We proposed the initiation of a document which we refer to as ‘Religious Tolerance and Hate Speech Bill’, which unfortunately has not seen the light of the day.”

The Co-founder also spoke on how people misconstrue thier work. “The word interfaith has been interpreted differently by people, but all we are saying in interfaith is that, you cannot join us until you are religiously sensitive and committed, so our call is for the two religion or more to come together to seek for common ground and work towards peace.”

“Another major challenge is sustained funding, people generally do not believe in investing in peace until there’s a problem. When crisis happen, they begin to look for us to put the fire off, so we are tired of going to chase the fire when we can actually stop the fire from taking place in the beginning.”

“On the issues around our constituencies, that is the religious leaders, sometimes they ventilate issues that are not supposed to be released to the public and considering Nigeria being a religious nation, it sparks up negative discuss and problems occur.”

SUSTAINED RELATIONSHIP

Speaking on the secret on how they have sustained thier relationship despite their difference in faith as a Nigerian Imam and Pastor known worldwide, Pastor Wiye said, just like every human they also have their little quarrels here and there, but they have decided over the years to live above their trivialities.

Both Pastor Wiye and Imam Ashafa described one another as strong, committed and dedicated to peace work, though, Imam Ashafa said Pastor Wiye is an introvert who has the ability to listen more while the Imam is an extrovert who speaks a lot.