Mr. Anicetus Atakpu, Resillience Programme Coordinator with ActionAid, Team Lead of the SARVE 11 Project for ActionAid says the Community of Practice holding in Lokoja aims at looking at those best practices that would enhance Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) implementation in Nigeria.
The community of practice is hosted by ActionAid Nigeria with Participation Initiative for Behavioural Change in Development (PIBCID), Global Peace Development (GPD) and Beacon Youth Initiative (BYI) with funding from the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund, (GCERF).
ActionAid Nigeria has through the “System and Structure Strengthening Approach Against Radicalization to Violent Extremism (SARVE II) Project”,
In an interview on the importance of the COP, Mr. Anicetus said ” in the course of our program implementation, there are experiences that we could share and learn from each other.
” The COP is usually hosted quarterly by different principal recipients and in this time, it is ActionAid that is hosting this edition and with the theme: Advocacy And Policy Influencing in the Prevention Of Violent Extremism.
” You will agree with me that the current violence that we are expressing in Nigeria is beyond engagement by Communities. Here we say security is every man’s business but it is beyond engagement by just the community or by individuals.
We discovered that there are some structural deficits, structural challenges in the system that needs to be looked into or needs to be fixed for us to actually have the kind of peace that we want to experience or that we envisaged
” As such, we feel that this is a proper timing for us to start looking beyond the individual or beyond the works we do in the Communities but start focusing on policy influencers and begin to advocate for some structural changes in our communities.
” For example, the security architecture that we have now is a Federal one and is not in the concurrent list but on the exclusive list. This means that its the engagement from the National level that can address some challenges that we have in the security template.
” We have been pushing for community policing but until now there’s no strong bite from the National Police level, it will be difficult for us to achieve anything at the community level in terms of community policing.
” Also in the area of employment. One of the core drivers of violent extremism is unemployment. Unemployment is very low currently in Nigeria. Again with the pandemic that just happened more people have dropped below the poverty line in Nigeria which calls for serious solution.
” Regardless of what we do as NGOs or as individuals, it is difficult for us to close that gap as such we will still need the government to come into the engagement, in terms of bringing out policy document, blueprint, maps on where we are going to in terms of job creation.
” We had promises from the Federal Government on job creation. We need to start advocating as practitioners of prevention of violent extremism to start seeing all those policies come into fruition.
” Look at the issues of injustice which are influencers of Violent Extremism. Today, our Court systems, as a speak now in Nigeria by virtue of the strike action by Judicial Staff Union Of Nigeria (JUSUN) are grounded. So what becomes the hope of the common man?
” These are issues, these are policy issues that need to be looked into. When you look at the academic system, as we speak the polytechnics are on strike. There are different strikes ongoing even with the Legislature. The State legislature cannot sit as we speak because the Parliamentary Staff Association of Nigeria (PASAN) are on strike. These are policy issues that are beyond what the individual can do.
” So what we are saying that is that we want to go beyond community engagement. We want to go beyond coming out as NGOs to work and to start addressing issues of policy, start addressing issues of law, frameworks that need to happen to aid Preventing Violent Extremism.
” We are believing that arising from this three-day policy Community of Practice, we would have been able to establish very strongly or built our capacities very strongly on issues that have to do with following up or engaging duty bearers, to policy influencing or engagement towards preventing violent extremism because we can no longer do it alone”.
Mr. Anicetus disclosed that ActionAid is intervening across four states in the North Central, Nigeria, pointing out that it is implementing Projects in Kogi and Nasarawa States. ” We have WEB implementing in Benue State and IGRS implementing in Plateau State” he explained.