Reverend Father Dr Stephen A. Koya of the Saint Theresa’s Parish in Nandom has appealed to the youth to use advocacy to prevent communal, civil, and electoral violence always to promote peace.
“You are key to providing security and preventing communal, civil, and electoral violence, especially during, before and after elections. Peace, harmony, and security are key, core and critical for justice and freedom in growth and development,” he said.
Rev Father Koya urged Ghanaian youth and all other stakeholders to pledge unconditionally and unequivocally that before, during, and after the NCCE’s engagements, they would stand firm for peace in their various constituencies as ambassadors of peace, bridge builders and agents of transformation, growth, and development.
These he said should be hinged on building cultural standards synergies, principles, values, talents and traditions towards harmonisation, integration, integrity, and synchronisation.
“Let each of us undertake an inquiry into the socio-cultural or traditional ways and means of building or ensuring peace and resolving conflict in our various traditional societies or cultures,” he said.
Reverend Father Koya made the appeal when he spoke on: “Preventing electoral violence and peace building mechanisms” during an engagement with students of the Nandom Midwifery Training College.
He called on stakeholders to consider investing in peacebuilding mechanisms as a worthy investment for sustained growth and development, sanity and security, stability and sensitisation coupled with empowerment to address poverty in all its ramifications, integration, integrity, and harmonisation.
He said in peace building, there was an urgent demand for a sustained need for focus, assiduity, patience, integrity, perseverance, truth, mutual trust, and respect coupled with a sense and spirit of decorum, direction, and discipline.
He said it was better for the youth to always resort to dialogue, mediate, lobby, and network, arbitrate, intermediate, cooperate, collaborate, negotiate, sensitise and responsibly socialise than to mobilise resources to silence the guns and heal the wounds of conflicts, noting: “jaw-jaw rather than blow-blow.”
Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) Seth Sasu appealed to the students to provide information and intelligence of suspicious occurrences at their communities, the hospitals and schools.
He advised the students to develop the spirit of patriotism, civic responsibility, a sense of national belonging and social cohesion and bond together as a group on campus to safeguard their security.
DCOP Sasu urged the students to improve their knowledge and attitude towards the culture of tolerance and non-violence and become ambassadors for peace in the communities and at their working places.
Mr. Victor Nuworkpor, the Upper West Regional Director of the National Commission for Civic Education, said Ghana was a peaceful country but was not immune to atrocities of widespread violent extremism across the West Africa sub region.
“In that regard, Ghanaians must therefore consider themselves as active partners in curbing extremists’ activities and in the country”, he said.
The engagements formed part of the National Commission for Civic Education’s (NCCE) efforts to educate the youth, especially students on “preventing and containing violent extremism” and deepening their understanding in peacebuilding mechanisms, social inclusion, and community-based mechanism for countering violent extremism, identifying early warning signs and community surveillances to promote peace.
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