President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday in Nouakchott, Mauritania, urged leaders to place a premium on youth development, with more seriousness and actionable ideas in promoting skills acquisitions, while discouraging idleness.

His media aide Femi Adesina, in a statement, said Mr Buhari made the call while speaking at the African Conference for Peace, 2023, on Tuesday.

According to the Nigerian leader, idleness of youths and non-inclusion in discussing issues that shape their lives and the future portend liability for the continent, especially in religious fundamentalism and extremism.

The president, who was honoured by the Abu Dhabi Peace Forum with ‘Award for Strengthening Peace in Africa’, said there was a need to inculcate values and principles of tolerance and peace in educational institutions, and particularly, among the youths.

“African leaders and decision makers should ensure that democratic principles and good governance form the basis for management of affairs in every country in Africa, noting that peace, security and good governance are inseparable,” said the president.

Mr Buhari explained that there “is the need also for African stakeholders, that is, the government, private sector and the civil society organisations, to make concerted efforts to support existing mechanisms and initiatives to build strong and virile institutions.”

He said such institutions would effectively support good governance “which, inter alia, leads to the development and progress of our countries and continent.”

Mr Buhari added, “African leaders must reaffirm their commitment by demonstrating political will required for ownership of African Peace and Security Architecture and in the implementation of African Governance Architecture. We must also adjust the effectiveness of the early warning system and conflict prevention and adopt policies aimed at resolving the crisis of de-radicalisation through continuous dialogues and negotiations.”

Mr Buhari noted that efforts must be concretised towards the curtailment and possible prevention of the circulation of small arms and light weapons, as well as the festering of the foreign fighters into the African continent.

The president called for the imperatives of the next Summit of the African Union to take a holistic review of the challenges that continue to fester in Libya with the hope of finding pragmatic African approach to resolving the over a decade-old instability in that country.

He added that the challenges had made Libya a haven for all kinds of weapons and foreign fighters destabilising the sub-regions and Africa.

The Nigerian leader told the forum that global terrorism, banditry and other trans-national crimes had continued to pose enormous challenges not only to Africa but to global peace and security.

According to him, the phenomena have become perennial threats to sustained economic development and growth.

He, however, revealed that Nigeria and other regional bodies in Africa and the rest of the world had been working assiduously to deal with these existential threats to the very existence of humanity.

”For us in Nigeria, we continue to engage bilaterally and multilaterally to comprehensively win the war against Boko Haram insurgency and other related terror groups through kinetic and non-kinetic approaches,” stressed Mr Buhari. “When I assumed power in 2015, Boko Haram held about two thirds of Borno state, half of Yobe state, and a couple of local government areas in Adamawa state, all in the North-East of Nigeria. We have been able to retrieve these swathes of territories by investing over a $1 billion to acquire hard and soft ware weaponry from the US and other friendly countries to carry out sustained operations against insurgency since 2015.”

(NAN)