ADVOCATING PEACE
WHAT IS TRANSFORMATION WITHOUT PEACE?"
As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors …of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves …Education, properly speaking, is an initiation into the skill and partnership of this conversation in which we … acquire the intellectual and moral habits appropriate to conversation.. The final measure of intellectual achievement is in terms of its contribution to the conversation in which all universes of discourse meet.— Michael Oakeshott
ADVOCACY: THE INFLUENCING OF OPINION
Movements for Transformation succeed or fail on the basis of their capacity to mobilize resources for the conduct of public advocacy for peace. Access to large, willingly attentive audiences is the main resource required for influencing public opinion, the objective of all Transformative movements. “Talk is cheap,” people say, but it is not necessarily so. Private chitchat may be free, but time at the microphone in a large meeting is doled out sparingly. Air time on the radio is sold at hundreds of naira per minute. A chance to lecture to hundreds of students is a privilege available to few. To break into print can be even more daunting. Access to wide audiences is scarce and important. Speeches and publications shape the overall direction of society, that “conversation in which all universes of discourse meet.” Transformative movements are campaigns of advocacy — programs deliberately contrived to induce others to change their wrong opinions and their primitive behavior. Advocacy is a form of discourse that uniquely and invariably help people see the importance of living together in peace and unity. Tranformative movements depend on visionaries. The movements that emerged these days are too narrowly focused; if they are to succeed, they must coalesce as a comprehensive agenda, nurtured by visionary and transformative leaders and manifesting themselves as Champions of reform. Our problems arise from common causes, and can be resolved only when the linkages among them are recognized as global in scope. Yet political arena today lack any analyst with the breadth of vision and political engagement.if we are to see change, transformation, reform or the dream state, we must embrace PEACE. All the ethnic groups in Nasarawa State must realized that, transformation can and will only come when there is peace, (Both the absence of War and crisis, and peace within us-emotional peace).No investor will bring his/her business to a region full of crisis and violence. No government can rule its people well if crisis is everywhere.As a people, we must find ways of dialoguing with each other. One tribe must be ready to compromise for the sake of peace.Gyunka Transformative Movement believe so much in Peace, that is why we are advocating for peace. We will organise campaign and seminars that will enlightened our people on the benefits of living in peace with each other. Why not join us today in this quest?
