By Linus Oota, Lafia

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Tuesday began a two-day multi-stakeholder regional peace-building dialogue for Benue, Nasarawa and Taraba states as an integrated approach to building peace in Nigeria’s farmer-herder crisis.

The two-day peace-building dialogue hosted by the Nasarawa State government in Lafia, the state capital, had delegates from Benue, Nasarawa and Taraba states in attendance.

In a chat with reporters, representative of the UNDP at the regional peace-building dialogue, Christian Okafor said the whole idea was to ensure that UNDP continues to support the governments of Benue, Nasarawa and Taraba consolidate their efforts in peace-building.

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Okafor said: “It is important that with our peace-building project, through the collaborative effort of both the state and non-state actors, we will continue to support the governments of Benue, Nasarawa and Taraba to ensure peace in that region, as well as to ensure that the region continues to sustain its developmental efforts.

“So, the whole idea of coming here is to bring Benue together with Nasarawa and Taraba. But most importantly, in this corridor from Taraba to Nasarawa down to Abuja, we should be able to collectively secure it and having our people living in peace with their eyes closed.”

Representative of West Africa Network for Peace-building (WANEP), Chief Bridget Osakwe, said WANEP was inspired by the desire to contribute, support and complement the effort of the state governments in enhancing state-level peace architectures to support conflict prevention efforts.

She also said the desire was to increase responsiveness to farmer-herder conflicts through the operationalisation of mechanisation for early detection of conflict risks.

She said: “UNDP and WANEP recognises the complexity and severity of the unfolding farmers’-herders’ clashes in Benue, Nasarawa and Taraba states and is committed to promoting peace.”