By Bashir Hassan Abubakar
To further entrench conflict free service delivery in the focused sectors of Health, Education and WASH in Bauchi State, USAID Funded State Accountability, Transparency and Effectiveness (State2State) Activity Bauchi Field office has organised a Two Days conflict prevention and mitigation dialogue to review previous plan of action earlier developed in the last quarter.
The dialogue, held at Hazibal Hotel Conference Hall between 4th-5th December, 2024 attracted both State and Local Government officials in the priority sectors of Health, Education and WASH. Other participants were, religious clerics, community leaders and CSOs.
In a welcome remark, the state team lead the USAID State2State Bauchi field office, Rabi Ekele thanked the high calibred participants for honouring the invitation of the State field office.
Ekele said that some of the key milestones achieved by the USAID State2State Bauchi field office could not have been possible without the support of the participants whom she described as partners and key stakeholders.
Represented by the field office’s Citizens Engagement and Capacity Building specialist Habila Salem, the STL said that the importance of the conflict mitigation dialogue could not be over emphasis, considering that peace is a prerequisite to achieving any reform at both Government, Organisation and even community levels.
Ekele said that the dialogue is aimed to review the previous action plan developed by the participants with a view to strengthening conflict-free service delivery in priority sectors of Health, Education and WASH, through prudent public financial management in Bauchi State.
Giving an overview of the previous dialogue, USAID State2State Conflict Specialist Mathias Yake said that the objective of the two days engagement was to provide progress updates on implementing the previous quarters’ action plans on agreed next steps, key results achieved, challenges encountered, and lessons learned.
According to Yake, the dialogue will also focus shared experiences of stakeholders’ efforts in mitigating farmer-herder conflicts in Bauchi state, and also increase stakeholders’ knowledge, understanding, and skills in using the different conflict mitigation and prevention approaches.
Other objectives include: To identify any emerging pull and push drivers of conflict and their impact on internal revenue generation and service delivery, especially in basic education, primary health care and WASH in the states, and possible ways/recommendations for addressing them.
The dialogue will further seek to develop an action plan on agreed next steps to guide the implementation of USAID recommendations from this quarter’s meeting.