The Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution has accused retired public servants of causing communal conflicts across Nigeria.

IPCR Director General, Bakut Bakut, who disclosed this in Abuja on Tuesday while delivering a speech at a stakeholders’ meeting, said the claim was based on the institute’s findings.

The institute organised the meeting to mainstream peace in the workplace.

Mr. Bakut noted that the workplace peace initiative was informed by the need to minimise the increasing labour-related conflicts that negatively impact workers’ productivity, morale, and economic development.

“Sadly, a thorough observation of the list of conflict stakeholders across Nigeria has revealed that a sizeable number of our retired civil personnel are the forces behind some difficult and perennial conflicts in communities across Nigeria.

“Our country is burdened by debilitating issues of conflicts in the six geo-political zones, ranging from herders-farmers conflicts to ethnoreligious violence and terrorism, which have led to the death of very resourceful Nigerians.”

He added, “It has also been observed that most sectors of our national life, including the work communities (public and private) are suffering from one form of conflict or the other caused by a sharp decline in the culture of peace in our communities and organisations.”

Mr. Bakut stressed that the lack of a peaceful work relationship between government and trade unions and professional trade unions had resulted in consistent frictions, loss of revenue, brain drain, and capital flight.

He also observed that intra- and inter-professional trade union wrangling had become pronounced in the health sector, culminating in unending disagreements among trade unions, managements of institutions, and individual workers.

Mr. Bakut further stated that most of the industrial conflicts that led to colossal economic waste in Nigeria started as minor workplace conflicts, owing largely to the fact that their regulatory documents did not formally mainstream peace into their operations.

“As a result, development programmes, such as infrastructural designs and constructions, city and road expansion, relocation and resettlement programmes and the likes, rather instigated more conflicts than they would have naturally happened,” he added.

(NAN)