ABUJA – Prof Oshita Oshita, Director-General, Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR), has urged Nigerians to conduct themselves peacefully during the upcoming general elections.
Oshita, in a statement on Friday in Abuja, reminded the youth that only the living could enjoy the dividends of democracy.
He said that as part of the institute’s efforts to promote peaceful elections, IPCR would be hosting SELMA, a movie on non-violence on Monday at 3 p.m.
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“With the 2015 elections, Nigeria is at the climax of an epoch with monumental implications for peace and national integration.
“Some of the political events and campaign narratives could make or mar our democratic journey embarked upon in May 1999,” he said.
Oshita said SELMA was a 2014 American historical movie, chronicling Dr Martin Luther King’s three-month non-violent struggle for equal voting rights in America.
He said the vision of the movie for peaceful 2015 elections was to provide a constructive basis for political leaders to challenge the current tendency toward electoral violence.
“The film encourages the fostering of convivial relations among stakeholders of democracy as they commit to peaceful means of democratic transition through popular, free, fair and violence-free elections.
“The central theme of the movie is not just in the historical protest march that took place from Selma to Montgomery.
“But the peaceful and non-violent nature of the march that made it a thing of national and international significance,” he said.
He said the moral in SELMA was to show the international community that Nigerians could stand for peace and non-violence in building their democracy, irrespective of their diversity. (NAN)
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