Abdulsalam Kick-Start Peace Tournament In Plateau For Muslim And Christian Youths
Yakubu Busari
The Chief Executive Officer ,CEO, of Displaced Women and Children Foundation ,also the Director Face of Peace Global, Salis Mohammad Abdulsalam has kick-start peace tournament gear toward promoting peaceful coexistence amongst Muslims and Christians residence in Jos North LGA of plateau State.
Speaking to journalists at his office in Jos recently, Abdulsalam said about 140 youths are going to participate.
He said, Jos the plateau state capital are set to kick start peace football tournament geared towards bring back the stained relationship between the two religions in the state.
The idea behind the tournament which we go simultaneously with music and football tournament, is to help repair the already broken down of trust and hitherto relationship existing amongst them mostly youths .
Abdulsalam said the step taken towards cementing the broken relationship between the two religious groups in the state is imperative because if we are not proactive to certain peace issues, that is when it result to people been displaced.
He added that as the convener and initiator for the Movement For The Rights Of Almajiris, said to achieve this, we want to be tangibly reach out to the actual stakeholders not in terms of the elites ,also reach out to communities in terms of healing and touching those who are directly not conflict drivers alone, but those participants in conflict.
The organization is going to carry the peace campaign to those who are directly involved like the substance abuse, idle persons as we can no longer deal with them through any middle persons like the ward heads, villages heads,Association ,Exco and Mai- Agwans,which we hope the approach will be different form the normal workshops and seminars .
“We have started the preparations, steps have been taken and anticipated to get the desire results, we are looking at communities violent flash points like, Dutse Uku, Tina Junction, Rikkos, Agwan Rukuba where everybody think you most be a Christian to leave in those axis, the same thing also applied to area like Mentanity junction extended to Chobe junction “.
“Feri -Gada, University of Jos hostel those are the areas we are considering as flash point in the state which our campaign is targeting which has hitherto referred to as”Gaza Streets”as we have in the Middle -East “.
Salis stressed that the next step of his organization is to pay an advocacy visit to the communities involved to produce football teams that would represent their various communities in the peace tournament that would comprise both the Muslim communities and the Christian communities.
The theme of the program tagged, “Music +Football =Peace” we have trophy, jersy, net for the goal post and all the necessary materials for the tournament.
He further said the competition which is purely for Peace is not to show the most powerful team or teams as the case may be.
“We have what will call mentoring and counselling session where all the footballers would assemble in one hall in Jos North for counseling and they can play and do things in common during that assemblage.
we are creating platform whereby we start to develop leaving together which is basically what we want to achieve.
The organiser further add that the players will be encourage during the tournament by rewarding the most valuable player, highest goal scorer, and call on the chairmen of the affected communities to contribute by presenting trophy to be contested for tagged chairman’s trophy.
