ACReSAL Officials Tasked On Peace-building, Social Cohesion

National project coordinator of Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes (ACReSAL), Abdulhamid Umar, has urged participants of ASCReSAL projects to pay attention to the all-important training.

He said doing so would enable them to reflect on its benefits to their states and to act as ambassadors of peace and social cohesion.

According to him, ASCReSAL has invested in some areas in the northern states and for those investments to thrive, there must be absence of hostility and violence.

Our correspondent recalled that ACReSAL project is a multi-sectoral and multi-institutional scheme, covering environment, peace-building, agriculture and water among others being sponsored by the World Bank.

Umar stated this in Jos the Plateau State capital during the opening ceremony of a three-day training titled: “Resources for Participatory Conflicts Monitoring Reporting and Learning’’ organised for ASCReSAL project staff for the North Central in collaboration with Search for Common Ground.

The national coordinator, who was represented by a climate change specialist, Mrs. Henrietta Nyazi, explained that the training is meant to strengthen ACReSAL’s capacity to improve on conflict transformation skills and monitor conflict impact.

“We are here to train ACReSAL team to support community cohesion and peace-building at the community level where ACReSAL is intervening.

We are here to enhance the capacity of ACReSAL staff to be able to implement their activities in conflict affected contexts using the Common Ground Approach (CGA),” he said.

Similarly, the Plateau State coordinator of ASCReSAL, Mr. Garba Gowon, said the focus of the training is an initiative by Search for Common Ground who engaged the people at the grassroots on how to mitigate conflict in communities.

According to him, this kind of engagement is necessary for ACReSAL project implementation, which is usually community-based.

“As you can see, most of our communities have been engulfed with one conflict or the other. For example, herders/farmers’ conflicts. This training is organised in order to build the capacity of the participants,” he added.

He said it would enhance the capacity of the participants, who are actually the people involved in implementing the ACReSAL project.

Gowon added that the workshop is timely because this is farming season, a time when most of these conflicts occur in Nigeria.

Also, Mr. Godwin Okoko from Search for Common Ground said they were working in conjunction with ACReSAL to resolve environmental challenges facing the country.

“We served as a consultant for ACReSAL. Search for Common Ground is one of the global entities dedicated to conflict prevention and peace-building all over the world. We were contracted by ACReSAL to build the capacity of their state programme teams in the 19 northern states,” he said.