GOSHEN, Ind. (AP) - Peace was the focal point of a special public luncheon held Tuesday afternoon at Goshen College featuring representatives of the Nigerian peace building organization African Foundation for Peace and Love Initiatives, or AFPLI.
The luncheon centered around a presentation by AFPLI founder and CEO Titus Oyeyemi, who provided attendees with an update on his organization’s peace program and progress since its founding in 2004. The group’s motto reads: “Bringing God’s Peace, Love and Wholesomeness to Africa.”
Also on hand to provide some insight into the Christian organization’s work was Olufemi Oludimu, a member of the AFPLI board and a professor of agricultural economics at Olabisi Onabanjo University in Nigeria.
Just prior to Tuesday’s luncheon, Oyeyemi and Oludimu joined GC President James Brenneman and other GC officials in a private meeting intended to foster a deeper academic relationship between GC and the AFPLI.
According to Oyeyemi, the AFPLI is billed as a multi-tiered organization working to promote proactive grassroots peace building for ethnoreligious and ethnopolitical harmony in Nigeria.
Headquartered in Lagos in southern Nigeria, Oyeyemi told The Goshen News (https://bit.ly/1kfnqaR ) that the AFPLI seeks to provide structured education for peace and social-cultural adjustments, school-based and community-based youth peace and nation building initiatives.
Along those lines, Oludimu provided attendees with a breakdown of one of the group’s main peace-building initiatives, a 20-year educational program known as Tomorrow for Youth Peace and Nation-Building.
Through the program, students are first targeted in nursery and primary schools for a nine-year membership in the group’s African Children of Peace Clubs (ACPC), which uses the idea and practice of peace as a central element of its curriculum.
Next comes a six-year membership in the Youth Peace Alliance Clubs (Y-PAC), which is targeted at students in secondary schools with a focus on youth peace and nation-building.
Following Y-PAC, students then enter a four-year membership to the KAIROS Peace and Love Clubs, which is targeted at young adults in institutions of higher learning with a goal of “equipping the new African peace-builder” with the skills and knowledge to promote peace within the region and beyond.
Closing out the program is a one-year membership to the New Peace Legacy Club, which is targeted toward graduates doing their national youth assignment with the goal of preparing the students for future roles in community, regional, national and international peace-making and conflict resolution.
While education in and of itself is an honorable pursuit, Oludimu noted that the need for peace education in this sense is particularly poignant when it comes to the violence that is currently spreading through much of Nigeria.
As a vivid example of that need, Oludimu pointed to the increasing reach and violence of the Islamic militant group Boko Haram, which on April 15 was responsible for the kidnapping of several hundred girls - a majority of whom were Christian - from a remote village school in northern Nigeria.
However, while the recent Boko Haram fiasco has been grabbing headlines around the globe, Oyeyemi was quick to point out that violence in Nigeria has been an ongoing concern for decades with very little reaction from the international community.
“The United Nations Headquarters in Abuja was attacked by Boko Haram in 2011, and nobody said anything about it,” Oludimu said. “There are 52 Catholic churches in Borno State, and of those 52 churches, 50 were surrounded and burned, many with people inside. Not all in one day, but over a period of time. So that’s why I’m saying that it’s time for world leaders to rethink what’s happening in Nigeria.”
In speaking directly to Boko Haram’s kidnapping of the Nigerian girls, Oyeyemi’s wife, Fehintola, said she believes the shock and scope of the event - while horrendous - may finally be what the country needs to foster real and lasting change.
“We can only hope that this type of event will spur some action,” Fehintola said of the mass kidnapping. “It has to start from somewhere. They have maintained silence for all this time, and maybe this will be the beginning … maybe something good will finally come out of this.”
In the meantime, through programs such as Tomorrow for Youth Peace and Nation-Building, Oludimu said the hope is to get to young Nigerian students early with the message of peace, before they can be lured into supporting groups such as Boko Haram with the promise of money and power.
Oyeyemi summed up that hope in a quote from his recent book, “Equipping the new African Peacebuilder.”
“Violence is an ancestral fire,” Oyeyemi stated. “It continues to burn and haunt us. It’s time to break the cycle. Africa will do that through conflict transformation and through empowerment at the grassroots. In this way the fruit of God’s peace will be produced.”
For more information on the AFPLI and its mission, visit https://africanfoundationforpeace.org.
- See more at: https://www.goshennews.com/local/x2117421513/Nigerian-peace-building-advocate-visits-Goshen-College?zc_p=2#sthash.fNgpREat.dpuf
___
Information from: The Goshen News, https://www.goshennews.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.