Stakeholders have applauded USAID’s State2State focus on Citizen/CSO engagement to improve the subnational government’s ability to mitigate conflicts.
After a two-day FY2024 Quarter 4 Conflict Mitigation and Prevention Dialogue in Sokoto, participants resolved activities within the stipulated timeline on how to strengthen the stability of the state.
In his welcome address, State2State Team Lead, Dr Ladan Abdulkadir, said the dialogue’s objective will focus on the benefits of past engagements and the way forward.
According to him, “We have had a series of engagements, and now, we want to see how this conflict mitigation and prevention dialogue have impacted on the citizenry and how it will continue to post State2State engagement.”
State2State Conflict Specialist, Cosmos Dinee, dwelled extensively on interactive technical session with the topic, “Overview of conflicts issues identified in the Q4 Yr4 and their impacts on the peace and stability of the state.”
During the interaction on postmortem appraisal of the local government council elections, Sokoto State Independent Electoral Commission, SOSIEC, executive chairman, Alhaji Aliyu Sulaiman, thumbed up the commission for conducting a free, fair and successful election.
Represented by Abubakar Haliru Dange, Commissioner, Operations/Logistics, the executive chairman noted that, “Against all apprehension, the council elections in the state was conducted peacefully, without any hitch.
“This was attested to by all political parties that participated in the elections. The success of the election was attributed to the transparent manner in which SOSIEC carried out its responsibility.”
Day two technical sessions focused on participation and roles of women in conflict prevention and mitigation.
Learn2Read representative, Junaidu Umar Jabo (Sardauna Jabo), a Parent Community Leadership, PCL Specialist, in his remarks, harped on scaling down the outcome of the dialogue and action plans to schools and communities.
Some of the recommendations to mitigate recurrence of violent conflict and strengthen stability of the state include, government addressing issues of security and integrating citizens into early warning system.
