President Muhammadu Buhari has listed poverty, injustice and lack of jobs as being responsible for inter-communal and intra-communal conflicts in the country.
He spoke while receiving a delegation from the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, an organisation active in the promotion of peace.
Buhari, in a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, said to achieve peace, greater effort must be made to eradicate poverty and injustice.
He described ethnic and religious conflicts in parts of the country as outward manifestations of underlying joblessness, injustice and poverty.
On conflicts between farmers and herdsmen, the President said a plan to map out grazing areas would be presented to the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) as a temporary solution to the conflicts until cattle owners are persuaded to adopt other means of rearing their cattle.
Buhari hailed the centre for the relative peace in Plateau State as well as their activity in Southern Kaduna.
He agreed with the centre that dialogue was preferable to the use of law and order mechanisms to resolve conflicts.
The centre’s Executive Director, David Harland, told the President that following their success in facilitating the settlement of the inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflicts in Plateau State, the group had moved to Kaduna State.
He hoped that the techniques used in bringing peace to Plateau State could soon be deployed to deal with the Boko Haram insurgency and other conflicts.
