Unemployment, major trigger of insecurity – Peace Corps boss Akoh

The National Commandant of the Peace Corps of Nigeria, PCN, Dr Dickson Ameh Akoh, has identified unemployment as the major trigger for insecurity and one of the challenges confronting peacebuilding efforts in Nigeria and other African countries.

He argued that the ugly trend must be frontally and effectively tackled by African leaders because of the huge negative effects on their teeming youths.

Akoh spoke in Abuja on Friday while receiving a delegation from the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, Ghana, during a working visit to the Peace Corps of Nigeria.

Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, established in 1998 by the Ghanaian Ministry of Defence and commissioned in 2004, has the priorities of enhancing experience and competence in peacebuilding operations within the ECOWAS region and the rest of Africa.

Akoh said that the Peace Corps of Nigeria has been making frantic efforts to meaningfully redirect the energy of the youth in Nigeria into productive ventures for nation-building.

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To achieve more meaningful results, the Peace Corps boss expressed the readiness of the corps to continue to partner with other organisations locally and internationally in the task of ensuring the active participation of youths in productive ventures.

Akoh thanked the delegation for the visit and highlighted the efforts his organisation has been making in contributing its quota to Nigeria’s security architecture, especially in the areas of peacebuilding and intelligence gathering, since its inception over twenty-five years ago.

He also hinted to the delegation about the steps the organisation is taking in the National Assembly to broaden its scope and reiterated the commitment of the Peace Corps to continue to do more in Nigeria and globally.

Earlier, the head of the delegation, Air Commodore David Ekrong, said the visit was in a bid to seek collaboration with relevant ministries, agencies and some selected organisations with the sole aim of strengthening and deepening peace-building efforts across the West African sub-region.

Commodore Ekrong, who is the Deputy Commandant of the Kofi Annan Centre, explained that the delegation was on a tour of some selected African countries and had paid visits to the Federal Ministry of Interior, Federal Ministry of Youth Development and the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution before visiting the Peace Corps of Nigeria.

“The visit to Nigeria is essentially in a bid to seek collaboration with relevant ministries, agencies and some selected organisations with the sole aim of strengthening and deepening peace-building efforts across the West African sub-region,” he said.

Akrong applauded the tireless efforts the PCN and its officers have put in over the years to inculcate a culture of peace in young Nigerians.

He added that, after checking through the core mandate of the Peace Corps of Nigeria and its aims and objectives, he sees that the ideas of the Kofi Annan Centre are in tandem with those of the Peace Corps of Nigeria, hence the need for collaboration to achieve greater results in the sub-region.

Also speaking, the Programmes Officer, Women Youth, Peace and Security, Kofi Annan Centre, Eunice Kisiwaa Gyan, applauded African women for their unrelenting efforts in peacebuilding across the sub-region.

The Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, Accra, founded to train military, police and civilian men and women to meet the changing demands of multidimensional peace operations, is one of the three peacekeeping training centres of excellence mandated by ECOWAS to offer training in peacekeeping and peace support operations in Africa.