COFP Fellowship Program in Its 2nd Year

The Class of 2019 of the COFP Fellowship program commenced its week-long program on Interreligious Dialogue and Mediation from July 1st – 7th, 2019 in Abuja Nigeria. COFP Fellowship Program serves as a hub for bringing together multi-faith leaders from all over the country to learn skills for building sustainable peace within their communities. It is undeniable that many of the crises in Nigeria have their foundation on religion; in addition to poverty, mass unemployment, social-economic driven ethnic divisions between indigenes and settlers, ignorance, poor governance, instability, corruption and other fault lines. However, religion has been indicted as being at the core of community tensions in Nigeria, either as a trigger or escalator of conflict.Thus, offering an innovative and inclusive program that build the capacities of faith and community actors in transforming conflicts nonviolently and challenges unjust structures in order to create “just societies” and relationships that sustains peace at all levels is the goal of this project.

Our Fellowship program is one of the first of its kind in Nigeria and have graduated her 35 COFP Pioneer Fellows of 2018 Class on April 5^th, 2019 after a one-year intensive program which started from July 2018 to April 2019. As one of the conditions for graduation, each of the Fellows implemented a peace project in their communities as a way of stepping down the training received over a period of one-year. To wrap-up this one-year program, the 35 Fellows received the Cardinal Onaiyekan Foundation for Peace certificate in “Interreligious Dialogue and Mediation” issued by Veritas University, Abuja and also, an Award as Ambassadors of Peace. In order to continue with this peacebuilding program, the Foundation have selected again 34 COFP Fellows through a competitive process for another one-year Fellowship Program (July 2019-April 2020). These participants cut across Muslim and Christian religion including women and youth from different cultural backgrounds.