Harps On Significance Of Peace
The importance of peaceful coexistence cannot be over emphasized, and without peace, there would be no development.
For over 18 years, the people of Egba Agatu and Ologba communities of Agatu LGA of Benue State have been at daggers drawn over land dispute leading to loss of lives and properties.
However, it was this need for tranquility and peaceful co- existence that led Hon Adakole Saleh James, a critical stakeholder of Egba Agatu Community, Founder of Adakole Network for Peace in Agatu, and a Benue State House of Assembly Hopeful come 2027, took it upon himself to bring peace to the two warring communities of Egba Agatu and Ologba.
Yesterday being Sunday, April 20, 2025, Adakole James successfully brought the two communities together to embrace peace after taking up the peace role in 2013.
Adakole Saleh James said that Agatu Local Government Area, Benue State is one of the 23 LGAs in Benue State, predominantly inhabited by peace loving farmers, faming and fishing is their major occupation.
“I grew up to know about the cultural heritage of the Agatu Communities. We occupy a local government in Benue State and part of Nasarawa State.
“We have been peace loving people until 2008, I think it was in my secondary school when the crisis started in Egba which is my own very Community. This crisis was between Egba which is my own community and Ologba. This crisis has led to loss of lives and property and escalated beyond these two communities.
“We could not access our farms, we could no longer go for fishing, as I said earlier our major occupation is farming and fishing, your father doesn’t need to be a Civil Servant, your mother doesn’t need to be a government worker to careter for the family members. We are predominantly farmers and this was a lucrative and major source of our livelihood.
“And this crisis has actually denied us of government presence, no good roads, if not now that we have contractors on site and works ongoing through the efforts of the Governor, thank God for Governor Hyacinth Alia, who saw the need to connect the rural and the urban cities together,” he narrated.
Sale James thanked the current governor of Benue State for remembering the two communities with infrastructural development such as roads, maintaining that the two communities were literally abandoned by government due to insecurity, adding that without peace there would not be any form of development. “So we thank God for his intervention on infrastructure. This is the only development we can say we are witnessing since 2008, the government has outrightly abandoned us and every blame goes to insecurity.
“No development can come in any society without peace, any society at war, meaningful development cannot strive, and the war is not against external bodies, it is a war between brothers, a community against another Community within a particular set of people. It was a serious war since 2008,” he disclosed.
Sale James revealed how he took up the challenge of bringing peace to the two communities even at the risk of his own life. “By 2013, I took up this challenge, and say we cannot continue like this, myself particularly, I have lost lives, immediate family members, houses burnt down as a result of this crisis.”
He stated that if anyone has lost anything in the war, he has lost a lot. “If there is anyone who has lost anything in this crisis, I can say I have lost more. So I say, can I continue to wait and lose more lives? I may even be the next victim.
“So I picked up this challenge in 2013, I started preaching peace within my community, then we use social media, media houses to reach out to other communities because I couldn’t access them.
“Sometimes without security you cannot access these other communities to talk to them, thank God for social media, we always talk to ourselves on social media by reaching out to each other, on the need for peace, the essence of peace, why peace needs to be maintained and sustained, the need for forgiveness in order for us to grow, there is the need to let go, there is no need to fight over land, piece of land, there is no need. So when they saw the genuineness, the sincerity, because actually everyone was tired, the Egba community, the Ologba community and every other community, they were all tired of the crisis, we were tired of retardation, tired of retrogression, tired of backwardness, tired of lack of basic amenities such as health facilities, no functional schools in most of these areas, it has gotten to everybody’s neck, so it has become everybody’s business, and I am happy that the youths have woken up, from the enlightenment, from the discussions we had with youths from the commities and for the first time, I have been visiting the communities on some occasions, youths of Ologba Community, I have been visiting them, engaging them, on the essence of peace, why we must go back to the ancient path, why we must rebuild that Agatu that was inherited from our four fathers because I grew up riding bicycles, from my community to other communities 2am mid night, and you will hear nothing, but now people will be on transit, you will leave your house and say I am going to market, I am coming, I am going to the farm, and you just hear that somebody has been kidnapped and that is the end.”
He said for years this bad blood between the two communities continued and none of the communities could be exempted, adding that the meeting on Sunday brought joy to both communities “And for years this has been happening for a long time, this has been happening repeatedly, I cannot exempt my own community, I cannot exempt the other communities, of course both communities are involved in this, and this has taken so many lives, nobody knows who is next, so the meeting yesterday was one of the happiest moment in both communities.
“As I said I have been engaging them individually and I saw the need for us to move as a people, this time around not just as individuals, so when I visited the other Community, we had joyful moment, it was a deliberate effort, if you choose peace and I don’t choose peace, there won’t be peace, it has to be a deliberate effort between the two of us.
“So I led the youths from the other community to my community and when I introduced them to my people as youths from the other community, our people were happy, there was palpable joy and we had fruitful discussions, they agreed to sustain the tempo of peace, we are also devising strategies in order to sustain the peace, and we agreed to be having this engagement with the youths regularly.
“A crisis that lasted for close to 18 years, there is no magic about it, it is deliberate, it has to be genuine from both sides, they have to see the genuineness, they have to see the transparency of the process, they have to see the integrity of the whole process, and myself been the Founder of Adakole Network for Peace in Agatu, carrying out this outreach, reaching out to less-privileged and the displaced in this crisis, they see the sincerity of purpose, it is a welcome development.”
Speaking further, he said that latest meeting was the first of its kind since the starting of the crisis, saying that to sustain the peace there is need for regular meeting to renew the mindset of the two warring brothers. “There is need to sustain this on continuous basis to see a renewed mindset, to see the youths transformed and I commend my team members reaching out to the less privileged, the displaced as a result of the crisis.”With Adakole Network for Peace in Agatu (A.N.P.A), peace is here.
