Pledge Peace
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Today, everywhere you look is in turmoil. As less human humans, we have unwittingly let the genie out of the bottle and now “mere anarchy has loosed itself upon the world”, as YB Keats wrote in his famous 1919 poem, “The second coming”.
As the world seems to have forgotten the horrors that violent conflict has inflicted on vast populations in the Middle East, Eurasia, Latin America and Africa, a new theater has emerged in Europe. Since February of this year, the Russian Federation has been sowing life in Ukraine, with catastrophic consequences in colossal human and material losses.
The tragedy continues unabated as humanity falls further and further into recession. Rather than take the path of peace and conciliation, those who should know better are crying out for gun power and bellicosity. The purpose of the United Nations is to prevent what is happening today. In fact, Article 1, paragraph 1, of the United Nations Charter establishes that the purposes of the United Nations are to maintain international peace and security and to adopt measures to prevent and eliminate threats to world peace. .
However, it is ironic that the keepers of world peace are themselves the promoters of world conflict through what they do and what they don’t do in many cases. Perhaps, when they understand the legal maxim that “he who must come to equity must come with clean hands,” world leaders will realize how diminished they are by the double standard.
In Nigeria, as terrorists and bandits ravage the North, especially the North East, spilling blood, looting resources and kidnapping people at random, the “known and unknown gunmen” have transformed the South, especially the Southeast, into a vast wasteland of relentless murder.
Tears, heartbreak and blood define the daily lives of most Nigerians plagued by insecurity and plagued by hunger. For the faint-hearted, the overwhelming challenges and existential problems that ensnare Nigeria defy solution. Thus, their despair is a precursor to surrender and depression.
For the misinformed, every problem facing Nigeria is a nail requiring the instrument of a hammer. Therefore, the coffin of the country should be nailed down, and in the dissolution of the so-called Lugardian contraption lies the solution. What has the last African country, South Sudan, achieved in more than a decade of existence? Desperation is counterproductive and cutting off the head is not the cure for the headache that afflicts Nigeria.
Despite the politics of negativity that invades the horizon, peace education offers the possibility of positivity. In fact, for righteous minds, the implication of peace education is the realization that every cloud has a silver lining and there will always be light at the end of the tunnel.
It’s because, as Napoleon Hill once said, “whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” In Nigeria, it is conceivable and credible that peace is possible; that progress is achievable and that prosperity is achievable. I firmly believe that the path to peace lies in peace education at all levels. Peace comes from the Latin word “pax”, which means tranquility and the absence of war. For the Roman Empire, peace meant an end to the fighting.
Although peace does not simply mean the absence of overt violence (called “negative peace”), it essentially implies the presence of social, economic and political justice (“positive peace”).
Education, on the other hand, derives from the Latin word “educare”, which means to pull or lead. All education aims to bring out the best in its recipients and to lead people from darkness to light.
Therefore, peace education is the process of developing values, knowledge, intuitions and developing attitudes and skills to live in harmony with oneself, one’s God, others and the environment. natural. It’s about helping yourself and others to understand and transform conflict in personal life, in the community, and around the world.
If peace education is “learning to prepare learners to contribute to the achievement of peace”, as American peace educator Betty Reardon has said, it is desirable that everyone be a learner, teacher and worker in the vineyard of peace. Indeed, as Reardon noted later, peace education “could be an education for genuine security” that is lacking in our society.
Practicing peace begins with finding inner peace, and inner peace begins with contentment. You are welcome.
