The Minister of State for the Federal Capital Territory, Oloye Olajumoke Akinjide, on Thursday advised the Joint Faith Peace Initiative to continue to sustain religious harmony in the FCT.
The minister gave this advice during her conferment with the prestigious Interfaith Leadership Award 2012 by the Joint Faith Peace Initiative.
She disclosed that the leadership of the FCT Administration would support the organisation to achieve its mandate of restoring integrity and uniting humanity.
Akinjide said: “Religious harmony has become imperative for the nation to achieve meaningful development. We need to continue to sustain peaceful coexistence and harmony between Christians and Muslims in the FCT and in Nigeria in general.
“We need to have respect for one another and by this initiative, members of the organisation have demonstrated unity and peaceful harmony preached by the two religions.”
The minister assured the award organisers that the FCT Administration would also collaborate with the JFPI in the area of youth empowerment.
“Youth empowerment is one of the programmes of the present Administration and the government is going to employ the youths as well as trained them to be employers of labour,” she noted.
On the Interfaith Leadership Award bestowed on her, Akinjide said it was a call for more service to the people and sustain the present religious harmony in the FCT.
“It is a great honour and privilege to be conferred with the Leadership Award. It is also additional responsibility to continue to ensure peaceful coexistence and harmonious working relationship between the two religions in the FCT,” the minister stated.
The President of the Joint Faith Peace Initiative, Ambassador Liberty Okon, disclosed that the award was in recognition of the minister’s unbiased engagement with the two religions, thereby sustaining peace in the FCT.
Okon said: “The decoration of the Minister of State for FCT as the winner of our prestigious Interfaith Leadership Award 2012 is in recognition of her tremendous efforts to sustain religious harmony in FCT and to encourage her to do more in the areas of interfaith peace building.
“Our aim is to induct deserving stakeholders into this ship of interfaith peace movement in Nigeria as Ambassadors of peace.”
The JFPI is a global inter-faith peace re-engineering non-governmental organisation with the primary mandate of ensuring peaceful and harmonious coexistence among the people.
Members of the organisation in Nigeria include the Women’s Wing of Christian Association of Nigeria, Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations, Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution Abuja and National Orientation Agency.
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