Distinguished government officials, business leaders, critical stakeholders, captains of industries concerned citizens of kwara state, ladies and gentlemen of the press.

You are welcome to the press conference and launching of the Humans light humanitarian foundations project, tagged “Advancing peace, unity, empathy and inclusion in kwara state” a LEAP Africa and the Nigeria youth futures fund supported project.

Today, We are gathered to reaffirm our commitment to building a society that values peace, unity, empathy and inclusion, as we strive for a better future for all kwarans. Because only societies that exhibit tolerance, mutual respect, and culture of understanding have as treasure a secured future.

At the wake of the growing series of reactionary events, that tends to undermine the peaceful coexistence of people in kwara state, it becomes expedient to initiate a comprehensive approach to curtail the situation before it goes haywire.

It is a universal fact that peace is not just the absence of conflict, but a state of harmony and understanding that allows us to thrive together. Base on this realization, we find it urgent to prepare and execute this robust peace plan to amend and mitigate area where disunity, marginalization, religious intolerance and discrimination are dominant and often re-occuring. This project has been designed to be executed within the space of 10 months and it has been arranged into phases of different activity running simultaneously from the beginning to the end.

More so, it has been segmented into 3 main objectives, all with its ultimate goal and objective of leading the peace building and civic enlightenment effort through a people embedded approach.

We are committed to the task of achieving these 3 main objectives:-

1:-initiating a youth peace and civic enlightenment campaign:- a corner piece of this peace building effort is to facilitate a "youth based peace and civic participation advocacy flagship." This would ensure vibrant youth as change makers from all the local government of the state brought together, and equipped with necessary skills set to lead the effort on peace building at their various community level. This is to ensure that as drivers of change, we have created an avenue for the youths to take the lead in ensuring that the message and action of peace building and civic enlightenment penetrates the innermost part of Kwara state.

We are determined to facilitate a collaborative effort with the youths to also ensure that the peace building effort is sustained even after the completion of the project cycle. As representative of their various communities, the members of this flagship would lead engagement with stakeholders at the local level, this which would allow proper and strategic communication to take place between the executing partner, the stakeholder, and the people at large.

2. Stakeholder engagement and partnership:- To achieve a far-reaching penetration and acceptability of the project goals, strategic engagement of relevant stakeholders in the community would be taking place from the inception of the project till its completion. They as holders of important and influential position in the society, we intend to work with them to ensure that our measures are rooted in the most referenced threshold base of the society which wholly safeguards it form manoeuvering practices.

The government as a stakeholder shall be engaged to facilitate support and partnership in achieving the project goal. The trio arm of Government (executive, legislative, judiciary) shall be engaged at intervals to make necessary and significant contribution to the effort and to guarantee the sustainability of the objectives after the end of the project cycle.

In the sensitive categories of Traditional rulers, religious leader, business leaders and community leaders, we shall engage them strategically to configure a diplomatical peace building scheme, of which ensures that our campaigns are legitimized and backup by potential Sceptre. Relevant community organization would not be left out of the engagement session likewise.

3. Encourage open dialogue and community engagement; - Amidst the objective of the project is an avenue for dialogue and conversation sessions between various prominent personalities, and a random social interrogation across Kwara state. These dialogue sessions would be organized and arranged to arouse the consciousness of every member of the society to the need to always strive to de-escalate tensions, and put to neutrality undercurrent flow of generational misunderstanding, or that of present age. These dialogue sessions would be facilitated all through the project cycle in different locations of the state.

There shall be dialogue session on peace building and civic participation organized in public tertiary institution in the 3 senatorial District of the state, this would see students participate and contribute directly to the conversation on peace building and civic participation. Necessary arrangements would be made to ensure inclusivity among the youth as a corner piece of the community.

Senatorial retreat on peace building and civic participation would also be organized at different location in the 3 senatorial District of the state, this would see people from all walks of life gather to dialogue and have meaningful conversations and sensitization on the importance of dialogue in solving critical issues.

We are confident that with these efforts, we can ensure a community where peace building takes a front seat and civic participation is understood as a Conner stone for peace and development in the society. We implore the people of Kwara state to work with us, accept this effort as a general concern, and provide essential support to facilitate the success of the project. As the project success would translate to a more peaceful, unified, and inclusive Kwara state.

This project is ably supported by LEAP Africa and the Nigerian youth futures fund(NYFF). We are delighted that the importance of the project and the urgency of this effort are shared by our supporting partners, we remain confident that by the end of this project cycle, we would have set in motion the process of making kwara state a beacon of peaceful coexistence, tolerance, civic enlightenment and an inclusive society, in loggerheads with standard measures of the world.

Together we can create the Nigeria we want!

Regards to your composure.