By Rodgers Omondi, Busia
The National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) has reaffirmed its commitment towards ensuring they promote peace and integration in the country.
Speaking while in Busia during the transgenerational conversation, Director of Investigation and compliance James Wanyande said they are actively executing their mandate according to the law and constitution.
“We are having about 28 active cases under investigation. We are working under the law and we can only get to where the law allows us. We have been called to be the toothless entity but it is the law that has created us in that way. As the commission, we are trying to do reconciliation before taking people to court.” he said
The director further stated that having a trans-generational conversation is the better way that will ensure we understand each other and chat for the way forward.
“The trans-generational conversation is important because it offers a platform to different generations to be able to articulate matters affecting them and the country. It is also an opportunity for each generation to learn from each other.” he said
He further stated that Busia being a border town has challenges that are different from those experienced by other counties in the country.
“As commission we are encouraging the amicable conflict resolution mechanism and this entails sitting down and learning and understanding each other so that we can solve any dispute in our midst. This provides a better solution to move forward.
According to him, the commission is on the journey of coming up with the proposals that will help address the challenges experienced in the country
“We are going to have about 10 trans-generational conversations around the country, we will then come up with a policy brief that touches on the different sectors. Different recommendations will be geared to different organizations so that they can be implemented to help in solving the challenges that are being experienced.” He said
He called on the politician to ensure they practice clean politics so that the country can remain in a peaceful state. The youth were also called to use social media properly.
“We are calling on our youth to cease from using social media to spread hate speech and messages. We have history of how such actions has resulted to genocide to some places and that’s what we don’t want as a country. We can actually use social media well and monetize our clean content and earn a living”
Busia subcounty DCC Solomon Komen said the forum is providing an opportunity to the security and NGAO team to understand our youth better and know ways that they can use to ensure there is better relationship between them.
“When we put our country in a picture of conflict, it really affects our business and even relationships within ourselves and our neighbors. It is also enabling us to understand our youth better. We should not be waiting during the election time to start conversing, we should always converse so that we can together push our country forward.” he said
He also called for the conversation to start at the family level to address some of the challenges that are being experienced among the youth today.
Some of the things in our youth need to be addressed from the family level. Some of them are the cultural transition that we need to address as a country. “We need to sit down with the youth and make them understand that they have a role in protecting this country because it is theirs,”
