By Nicholas Kalu, Abuja

Co-Chair of the Interfaith Dialogue Forum for Peace (IDFP), Bishop Dr Sunday Ndukwo Onuoha, has called for increased collaboration between religious leaders and policy makers in a bid to tackle insecurity, COVID-19 and other problems facing the country.

Speaking during a high-level dialogue on insecurity and COVID-19 with policy makers and religious leaders in Abuja, Onuoha, also called for the building of a consensus towards strategic response to the security and health challenges of Nigeria.

The dialogue was organised by IDFP in collaboration with the International Dialogue Centre (KAICIID).

The clergyman said the insecurity and COVID-19 pandemic threaten to scuttle the efforts of individual farmers, communities and governments to ensure food security.

He said lives have been lost globally to the pandemic and Nigeria is not an exception, as it has exposed the decrepit state of the health system in Nigeria.

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Onuoha regretted that Nigerians did not only have the fear of being infected to contend with, but also the lack of health facilities to manage the thousands of infections and deaths.

The Co-Chair said all these have affected our sense of personal and national security.

He said the fabric of the country’s national unity, cohesion and integration is threatened everyday by the divisive comments and actions by few citizens.

He said this rhetoric is based on the increasing exposure of the country to inequalities, discrimination, exclusion, injustice and other structural deficits due to inadequacy of leadership.

He said “the wanton and mindless killing of Nigerians, the kidnappings ravaging homes and farmlands, the terrorism threatening our unity and threats to our traditional institutions, as well as our selfish tendencies, make Nigerians appear inhumane, as we chase not what will bring immediate succour, but what will advance long term personal gains.”

Onuoha said it was time for political party chiefs and high level stakeholders in government to come together to a bi-partisan roundtable, regardless of political leanings, to frankly discuss how to get the country “out of this doldrums that have come our bane.”

“We need to stop playing the ostrich and show indifference because whether we accept it or not, the chickens have come home to roost. What the country is faced with today affects all of us. It may be someone she today, but ask yourself ‘How safe am I?’” he stated.

Also speaking, Alhaji Ishaq Kunle Sanni, of the IDFP, said the present security structure in Nigeria cannot solve the country’s problems.

Sanni, also a Co-Chair, said though it is understandable that the security agencies are overstretched and overwhelmed, there must still be a way out of what he described as an unfortunate quagmire.

“Things cannot continue like this. That is where you makers and shakers of our society have been invited here to have a synergy on how to drive the process towards getting rid of this monstrosity called insecurity that stinks to high heavens,” he said.