Browsing by Author "John Tavershima Agberagba"

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ASUU’s Prolonged Strike, a way forward for the Nigeria Academia; Strategic non-violent action
(AIPGG Journal of Humanities and Peace Studies, 2022) John Tavershima Agberagba
The Nigerian Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) embarked on prolonged strikes from 1999-2022 demanding that the Federal Government (FG) fund public universities to be competitive and ranked among the world’s best universities. The strikes have yielded some infrastructural development, but have not raised Nigerian public universities to world standard. Thus, the continued struggle of ASUU with the FG. However, prolonged strikes contribute to low standards in public universities too: contracted school years, half-baked graduates, and extended course time by two or three years. It denies Nigerian graduates enough skills to make them competitive in the job market. Hence, a question about the justification for the use of prolonged strikes and a way forward for ASUU. This article employs a qualitative content analysis of a strategic nonviolent action case study of students in the Ethnic Albanian civil struggle in 2000 with that of ASUU. The sources are books, journals, newspaper articles, and internet databases. This article finds that ASUU needs to use massive strategic nonviolent actions to succeed. Additionally, it must rely less on traditional, religious, National Assembly of Nigeria members and other elite leaders. Rather, it must partner with students and their parents to succeed with massive actions. Public university students belong to the 133 million Nigerian families living in poverty. The students directly benefit from an international standard of public education in Nigeria. If ASUU adopts this new way, it will gain internal cooperation and solidarity; empower students and ordinary Nigerians with the knowledge of how to wage resistance against counterproductive policies of the Nigerian government.
Making Peace for Money
(AIPGG Journal of Humanities and Peace Studies, 2023) John Tavershima Agberagba; Anna Mafuyai Alahirah
Bandits make money from banditry; kidnappers from kidnapping; jihadists from jihadism, and farmers/herders pay militias, yet these groups rule by violence,AK-47s, and other assault means. So why should peacemakers not make money for peace-making? We argue in this article that $2.4 trillion (£1.5tr), or 4.4% of the global economy “is dependent on violence,” according to the Global Peace Index, referring to “industries that create or manage violence”—or the defence industry. Shareholders and their employees gain money from this industry, and governments pay and fund the military to gain geopolitical supremacy. However, peacemakers and peace entrepreneurs deliver the peace that leads to economic prosperity and stability in states, yet they do not gain monetary remunerations. Therefore, citizens, governments, and investors need to pay financial benefits to peacemakers and peace entrepreneurs for delivering peace to states. This article employs a qualitative content analysis of peace entrepreneurs’ work. The sources are books, journals, newspaper articles, and internet databases. The article concludes that for peacemakers to make money making peace for example in Nigeria, the federal, state, and local governments, must raise peace budgets, employ the unemployed (cheap workers for violence), and pay them to make peace; they must create the ministry of peace in the country, at states and LGAs levels; and the peace centres of tertiary institutions in Nigeria must teach peace entrepreneurs business plans for making peace for money. We present an example of a business venture based on the work of some local women making peace in the Benue Valley of Nigeria. If making peace for money becomes lucrative, we doubt if people will still resort to banditry, kidnapping, and joining farmer/herder militias to make money. Keywords: Peace entrepreneurs
Peacebuilding and Nigeria’s 2023 General Election: An analysis of cases from Benue and Plateau State
(HUMANUS DISCOURSE, 2023) John Tavershima Agberagba; Anna Mafuyai Alahirah; Celine Akudo Agboola
INEC staff work ethics; voter intimidation and inducement; security agents’ use of firearms, and peacekeeping at polling units. These topics are common election issues that arose in the 2023 Nigerian general election. This article is necessary to address the gap in the scholarly literature on Nigerian elections and its consequent lack of impact on election policy. We use cases from Benue and Plateau states based on participatory observation and descriptive presentation; and were view data from the internet, books, and articles. We theorise, Human Needs, the cases and find that the Police used pep-talk, threats, and firearms during the 2023 general elections in Benue state, but pep-talk is paternalism, an inhibiting satisfier; threats are pseudo-satisfiers and firearms are destructive satisfiers. Moreover, party agents and supporters used abuses and “religious shaming,” inhibiting satisfiers against each other and INEC officers in Plateau. Similarly, the agents and party supporters used cooked food and drinks, salt, Maggi cubes, and bags of rice even on voting day to induce voters. However, INEC staff succeeded in their work, and the elders in keeping peace because they used a synergic satisfier, that is, INEC used self-managed hard work and the elders used wisdom to prevail on agents and supporters not to share induced material at the polling unit. Therefore, we recommend the followings, that is, community elders and youth be trained and paid to maintain peace at polling units; voters be given a meal on election days to reduce voter inducement; some of the prescribed 1999 Nigerian constitutional synergic satisfiers be made rights of Nigerian as a problem-solving for empowering women, youth, the Police, and community elders in minimizing voter intimidation and inducement to conduct credible, free, and fair elections without violence in Nigeria.
Religion, parents and children in Nigerian peace education: A Roman Catholic behavioral parent training curriculum
(AIPGG Journal of Humanities and Peace Studies, 2022) John Tavershima Agberagba
Worldwide, 120 million girls are violated; 90% by family members, boyfriends/husbands, or known persons. In Nigeria: A) 1 out of 4 girls; 10% of boys are victims yet only 5 out of 100 children who report receive support. B) Poverty, social norms and cultural beliefs keep 10.5 million children of 5-14 years out-of-school. In Africa, the Catholic Church educates over 19 million children in 45,088 primary schools. As a Catholic priest, for the past 25 years, I have dealt with multiple cases of teenage pregnancy, physical child abuse and children out-of-school in Guinea Conakry, Mexico, and Nigeria. Therefore, given the Churches response to Clergy children sex abuse based on reporting cases, I propose a behaviour Parent Training Lessons (BPTLs) as a holistic way of minimizing children abuse. BPTLs transform poor parenting cultures—social norms and community beliefs that derive violence against children. It makes parenting semi-public and semi-professional.
Religious Women Empowerment Using the Shine Theory in the Tiv Catholic Women Organizations’ Incessant Leadership Struggle, Benue State, Nigeria
(HUMANUS DISCOURSE, 2023) John Tavershima Agberagba
The purpose of this study was to discover and classify the non-Christian politicking problems for leadership in the Tiv Catholic Women Organization (CWO) of Nigeria using the Shine Theory. The theory originates from women’s groups for empowering women in politics, businesses, and social situations and so, we thought it plausible to empower religious women to be firm on religious ethos. We used a qualitative methodology, in-depth individual interviews of 42 women, present/past presidents, and ordinary members of the organization in Makurdi, Gboko, and Katsina-Ala dioceses in Benue state. Administering four semi structured individual interview questions and two structured multiple-choice questions. Our findings surprised us as we thought that the leadership struggle in Tiv CWO was fundamentally husband and priest, male-related, manipulation, and interferences. However, the women report that they are mostly responsible for what is happening in their mist. We classify the non-Christian leadership fighting in the organization into seven categories: spiritual, psychological, political, business, social, family, and cultural. This theory applies to religious groups as well; Biblical women like Mary the Mother of Jesus and Elizabeth the Mother of John the Baptist; Ruth and Naomi, and many others, Biblical heroines, practiced the theory in their lives. Hence, the Tiv CWO should develop a systematic spirituality based on the study of Biblical women as their models since the organization does not have a clear spirituality. This modest study fills some of the gaps in the theory since there is little on it from the religious perspective. However, more studies need to be conducted to firmly establish a religious context and further development of the Shine Theory for women’s empowerment.