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Our Reconciliation Task.
(From The News (Nigeria) - AAGM)
Byline: Okafor Ofiebor
Fred Alasia, Chief of Staff to Governor Peter Odili, is Co-Ordinating the Peace Process in Rivers State. He Spoke to Okafor Ofiebor On His Assignment. Excerpts:
As coordinator of the peace process in Rivers State, what has been your experience?
Right now, the boys have just taken traditional oath not to fight each other. The State Government facilitated the reconciliation of all the warring parties. We spoke with the chiefs and combatants. We brought the combatants together for a series of meeting and developed a programme of disarmament. This is not by confrontation, but by the principles of absorption. First, they would be bound by their oath never to fight each other again. The government had to grant amnesty to those caught and imprisoned by the security agents in the cause of the crisis. They will submit all their arms to us and we would embark on a programme of re-absorbing them into the society. After this, the boys and us will now constitute a committee of 15 representatives of all the groups. We only assist them by vetting, superintending and providing logistics. And for the records, I can tell you categorically and emphatically that the State Government had not used money inducement as a barter for peace.
We have been providing them with transportation to help them get to the place. That is the level of our involvement. But everybody is working towards that programme. The state has a responsibility to absorb the groups. We did not go into discussing the merits of who is guilty in the chieftaincy matters (adjudging who is right and who is wrong). The approach there is, you can make trouble, but the state government is prescribing the ground rules for which you can make trouble. So we agreed, there will be no use of guns, knives or any weapon that can inflict injury on another person. The Geneva Convention did not outlaw war. It only prescribed principles. By the time we finish, I can assure you, there will be total peace in Rivers State.
Reports have it that Dokubo Asari's group has agreed to return 3,000 rifles as part of the disarmament and the state government has agreed to pay N250,000 per rifle. This is generating controversy, so much that some groups are feeling sidelined
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