WIC: Kaduna Speaker, Stakeholders Laud JISRA’s 5-Year Peace Interventions In Kaduna Communities

By Frederick Peters, KADUNA.

NEWSDAILYNIGERIA: The Speaker Kaduna State House of Assembly, Rt Hon Dahiru Yusuf Liman, and stakeholders have applauded the five- year peace interventions in Kaduna Communities, by the Women’s Interfaith Council (WIC) under the Joint Initiative for Strategic Religious Action (JISRA).

The commendations came pouring out at the  WIC JISRA community close out event on Tuesday 12th August, 2025, in Kaduna, which attracted several peace stakeholders, actors and beneficiary communities in the state among others.

The Speaker,  KSHA, Rt Hon. Dahiru Liman Yusuf, who was represented by his Deputy Rt Hon Barr. Magaji Danjuma, said  ordinarily what JISRA had done is supposed to be the job of government, ” because government is supposed to protect lives and property and it’s vehemently impossible that lives and property can be protected where there’s no peace, because where there’s no peace there’s always chaos and anarchy and all sort of issues, 

” but if you have organizations, like WIC JISRA who will take the bold step to ensure that there’s lasting peace, I can assure you that they may have reduced government’s work by 50 percent” he said

According to him,  the most cardinal point of governance is to protect lives and property but when there’s peace the issue of threat, the issue of war, the issues of banditry, armed robbery and other vices would be dispelled in the society, and that Society becomes a serene society, and once the society is serene and there are no issues,  then government will focus on the needed development, and then, ” there will be all kinds of developments that you can imagine in an atmosphere of peace” he added.

He maintained that as an assembly their duty is legislate laws that allow citizens to practice their religion of choice without discrimination, “we can’t make any law in Kaduna to stop anyone from practicing his or her religion.”

He said religious harmony is promoted in the state ” so all these are been encouraged by government and there are institutions like the Bureau for interfaith dialogue, in that interfaith bureau, we have both Moslem and Christian co-heading the bureau; it shows that this government recognizes peace as a fact and encouraging that the two major religions should co-habit and ensure that all their activities are carried together without any issues”

According to the speaker,  governance is a kind of a network and”: if  government decides to establish an interfaith bureau and there’s a budget to run the activities of the bureau, if the budget comes to the house, we will pass it because we want peace to reign, so we are also doing our best to ensure that there’s peace” he reiterated

Similarly, the Executive Director, WIC, Rev Sr Veronica Ifeyinwa Onyeanisi, OLA,, speaking on the JISRA project said ” in the last five years, we have been working in different communities in Kaduna south and Kaduna north, the communities were selected because they were conflict- prone communities, so we came in there to build bridges, to bring the two faith groups, Christians and Muslims there to learn to live together and we used the intra, inter, extra pillar religious approaches to do that, 

” the intra is when we bring the Muslims of all sects to understand themselves and work on their similarities and commonalities, then for Christians, we bring Christians of different denominations to understand themselves too and work together before bringing both religions together as inter, using inter pillar approach where they come to understand each other’s religion their differences and similarities and now dwell on their commonalities; things that bring them together, to work together”

She  further said ” throughout that period we also worked with the civil societies and government organizations using extra pillar path way, and it has been very successful, because it has helped communities to come to understand themselves and to understand that religion is not their problem, that both religions are preaching peace and respect for sanctify of life, so if both religions are talking about sanctify of life and respect for life why do you take life that you did not give?

” And we also worked with traditional leaders, women and youths in this program, so it has been very successful”

She however noted, that the journey was not without obvious surmountable challenges” throughout the program we had some challenges, the initial challenge was understanding what we are there for, people thought we are the NGO coming to share money, but later they understood, it is  more than that, though, we empowered them with entrepreneurial skills, but most importantly is the message of living together in peace, respect and celebrating each other, as you can see us today we’re celebrating our successes,  celebrating our progress, celebrating our sustainability” she stressed

 According to her , they will continue to interface with the Assembly and government to sustain the gains of the project in the past five years, especially via empowering the communities economically and legislate laws on the strengthening the culture of the people and peace” our culture is our way of life and you heard people say we need to separate culture from the Ministry of sports, for it be on its own, so it’s a takeaway that, we need to work on that, have a bill for culture to be used to promote peace” she stressed.

Similarly, the Former, Country Coordinator JISRA,  Istifanus Gimba, describing their interventions said” looking back in the past five years for me it’s a thing of joy in the sense that if you look back, you will see that there is positive Progress especially among our target communities, in the past when there is any kind of conflict or security challenge, people don’t stop to ask questions, 

” but I tell you now if any incident happens people want to know the story behind that action, what happened and because of the structures that JISRA has put in place which has helped us to have some kind of early warning, early response mechanism in place, you discover that once something happened people easily connect with the other faith and so you discover that machinery has helped  and I think over the years,

” we can see an increasing understanding among the people in  the communities and also we can see that truly dialogue can go a long way  in resolving alot of our problems that they don’t need to end in violence, so for me, it’s a thing of joy, it’s a thing to celebrate, so we thank the Dutch government for their generous funding over the past five years ” he stressed.

In the same vein, the Vice Chancellor,  Kaduna State University, ( KASU), Professor Abdullahi Ibrahim Musa, represented by Professor Hyacinth Aboh, said, the VC is quiet impressed with the fact that this gathering is talking about interfaith and peace building processes among the various religions,, ” you know KASU is a microcosm of Nigeria, every body is there,(  people of different faiths) 

”  so KASU is a centre of peace as well and centre of excellence also in peace, since the foundation of when  KASU started I’m not sure you heard  anytime of religious disharmony and the present VC is one of the persons that is practicing and pushing that peace should continue, so that is why even when he got this information, he asked me to come and represent him, so that we tell them( organizers) that we are partnering with them, we are part of them and if there’s anything like them establishing maybe  a campus, a wing of what they are doing, we’ll be glad to do so as well” he stated.

On her part, Hajia Khadijat Hawaja Gambo, one of WIC JISRA award recipients,  and one I of those who facilitated some of the thematic areas especially inter religious or interfaith dialogue for JISRA and WIC, while appreciating the honour done her, also hinted on the future of the project, saying ‘its just ending a phase’

 According to her, JISRA is only ending a phase not gone completely ” I don’t want to believe that JISRA is gone, with the close out event today,, I just want to believe life is in phases, that for this phase the are closing out on this phase, but I think one of the things there is to ensure continuity and sustainability of whatever they’ve done and incidentally in January early this I was in Togo, we held a meeting and what we were talking about is to see how the fund will continue, 

”  because there are a lot of people we’ve not touched and a lot of communities we need to touch and so the few communities that we have penetrated that have embraced peace now, but that is not enough so we are looking forward to another funding, so I won’t say JISRA has not seized, it may come in another name or form, but I am saying the peace building process has come to stay in Nigeria” she averred.

She further urged governments at all levels to do the needful to enhance the ideals of justice and peace in our society, with emphasize on infrastructures and dealing with insecurity and corruption among other ills in our our society.

Speaking on the recognition , she said ” it feels good, you know there’s this saying that teachers’  reward is in heaven, but it’s equally heartwarming to see that people appreciate the little that you have done and will boost your morale, that will give you more energy to continue to work for peace, so I think for some of us we have given our lives to peaceful coexistence in Nigeria, in our region Africa and also globally, so it’s one of those things I see as an energizer as we are happy for this award.” she reiterated.

The Village head, Hayin Banki, Mahmud Shehu Galadima, assessing the WIC JISRA interventions in his community within the period under review, said, ” the assessment is so high , great and very important,  JISRA impacted knowledge and promoted peace in our communities, so I’m really happy and appreciate what they have done., and we’re ready  to sustain it, by stepping it down, because what we have learned, we taking it to the communities and give them the knowledge ” he added.