Record Keeping Centres supported by the British Council’s Managing Conflict in Nigeria (MNC) programme, says it has recorded over 2, 500 conflict cases resolved by community leaders in Adamawa in the past one year.
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News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that MCN programme is supported by the British Council and European Union (EU).
Record Keeping Centers called: “Sulhu Centres” were established under the MCN programme, to support Nigerians with conflict resolution at state and community levels.
Abdukadir Bello, MCN Team Lead in Adamawa, told NAN on Tuesday in Yola, that the cases were recorded in 2019.
Bello said the centres meant to keep records of cases attended to by traditional rulers were established at Adamawa and Mubi Emirate Councils as well as Bachama and Ganye Traditional Councils in view of the effective role traditional rulers play in resolving conflicts.
He said records from the centres showed that Ward, Village and District Heads in Ganye Traditional Council attend to over 1, 400 cases while those in Mubi Emirate Council attended over 300 cases in 2019.
“Also, over 300 cases were attended in Adamawa Emirate Council, while Bachama Traditional Council where the centre started late, attended over 50 cases within the period under review.
“Over 90 per cent of the cases had been resolved while the remaining were either pending or referred to the police,” Bello said.
He explained that most of the cases attended by the traditional rulers were family and land disputes as well as farmers/herders conflicts.
Bello said that MCN had trained a total of 162 traditional rulers in areas of dispute resolution from each of the four areas, while their scribes exposed to data keeping.
He said: “This is to help the Emirate and Traditional Councils to analyse the type of dispute prevalent in a particular location for effective response.
“We have their staff as “Sulhu Ambassadors”, record keeping managers and system operators in the centres equipped with furniture and computers, we also provide the staff with stipend for logistics to collect data from field”.
According to him, traditional rulers particularly in the rural areas are known to be effective in conflict resolution, but they do not keep record, hence, the need for the centres to promote record keeping of attended cases.