COFP Summer Newsletter 2019

The year 2019 was a special one as the Cardinal Onaiyekan Foundation for Peace celebrated her Founder and President John Cardinal Olorunfemi Onaiyekan who celebrated his 75th Birthday in January and his 50th Priestly Anniversary in August 2019.

Youths Living Above Drug and Substance Addiction (YOLDA)program was initiated by the COFP Foundation in April 2018 as an avenue to support, help and assist reach out to the young people whose lives have been affected negatively through drug/substance abuse and addiction. Thirty-five (35) Youth benefited from this program which lasted one year – April 2018-April 2019.

Persistent conflict between Herders and Farmers in Nigeria have become a thing of great concern in the recent years due to its disastrous nature in terms of loss of life, property and its negative impact on rural livelihoods. With the conflict transformation and dialogue skills acquired by the COFP Fellows who are also members of these warring communities during the Fellowship program, a lot of mediation and peacebuilding activities are already going on in some of these communities.

The COFP Foundation has made it a point of duty to carry-out free medical outreach in various IDP camps in Nigeria. In partnership with the West Africa Community Missions, USA, the program took a different but wider scope this year.

While education is regarded as one of the basic rights of every child, not all children have access to quality education (unicef.org/nigeria.education). The rate of dropouts continues to be overwhelming even though primary education is officially free and compulsory as claimed by the Nigerian government.

Nigeria is very rich in water resources that many of its 36 states are named after rivers; Rivers: Benue, Niger, Cross Rivers, Kaduna, and Plateau (Nelson Odume, Rhodes University, 2017). The country has many water reserves which is higher than many African countries. It is only normal then that one would think that Nigerians have enough water to drink, but the reverse is the case as only 19% of the country’s population have access to safe drinking water.

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.