Various speakers at the just-ended 2024 Harmattan School initiated by UDS Institute for Interdisciplinary Research revealed that the most violence are committed and perpetuated by very young people who are influenced by political actors during general elections.
Security experts during the lecture series revealed that violent extremism is possible within communities that are highly deprived, and the majority of youth are unemployed. The experts noted that development needs are key if we have to eliminate extremism among youth.
However, in an exclusive interview with Hoenyefia Noah Nash, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG), Dr Kwesi Jonah observed that to eliminate violent extremism ahead of the 2024 general election in the country, civil society engagement must target young people who are used as instruments of violence. He noted that peace messages must be practical and related to the life of the youth to win their mindset against violence. “Most of the violence is perpetuated by very young people and so to get the message to them, you have to relate it to their lives. You are a very young man, a lot of promise ahead of you. You don’t know what you will become in the future. If there’s violence and you lose your life, you lose your job, what happens to you? So you must relate it to the lives of very young people who are usually used as instruments of violence. You must relate it to their lives. You have a job, you are not married and you are expecting to get married and have children. If there’s violence and you lose your life, what happens? So you should relate your peace message to their lives. If we do not maintain peace, this is what could happen to you. You could lose your life, your relatives and friends could lose their lives, properties could be damaged and so on and so on. When you relate it to their lives, it makes the message very practical”, he reiterated
Dr Jonah further cautions that despite no arrest or prosecution in the 2020 election death, it does not warrant retaliation since peace is key. “It is true that in 2020, about eight people lost their lives and the unfortunate thing is that, there has been no arrest, no investigation, no prosecution, no conviction, nothing since the last election when lives were lost, nobody got arrested, nobody got investigated, nobody got tried and nobody went to jail, so you see, some people may say we would retaliate, I think the best thing is not to think of vengeance but the best thing to do is to prevent what happened in 2020 election from happening again in 2024, let us do away with punitive. If anybody kills anybody or injures anybody, the law must take care of, it is unfortunate that what happened in 2024 has not been dealt with and we are going into another election. I think the hope and the expectation of everybody should be that, let us prevent what happened in the 2020 election from occurring again in 2024”, he stated.
Dr Jonah outlines the key roles that CSOs must play to make the general election peaceful. “The civil society organization (CSO) has several roles they can play.
- advocating for peace before, during and after the election
- to observe the election process itself. By the election process, I don’t mean the voting day; the voting day is properly the last at the tail end of the process. The way candidates campaign, the way parties campaign, the way electoral commission register voters, you should observe every face of the election process till the declaration of results and even how people respond to the declaration and so forth and so forth. So we should advocate for peace, we should monitor every process of the election to ensure that it conforms to the law”.
He urged the electoral commission to be guided in the statement and utterance to maintain peace and limit the threat of violence.
Source: Fiilafmonline / Hoenyefia Noah Nash
