The United Nations and the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR) on Thursday pleaded with aggrieved persons and groups in the country to embrace peace.

They said this at a news conference organised for the forthcoming 2016 International Day of Peace.

The Director-General of the IPCR, Prof. Oshita Oshita, said the Peace Day would present another opportunity for agitators to maintain peace.

He also said agitators are expected to agree to a ceasefire for, at least 24 hours as a respect for humanity.

“In the context of Nigeria, the 2016 International Day of Peace requires all aggrieved persons, groups and conflict actors to cause a ceasefire for at least 24 hours and allow peace to prevail.

“We demand all parties involved in crises in the country to agree to a ceasefire as no crisis can be resolved by violence; we still have to come to a roundtable for a meaningful resolution.

“We want to draw the attention of all conflict actors to the need to come to their senses in order to bring our country to the path of dialogue and development,” he said.

The Peace and Development Adviser to the UN Development Programme, Dr. Zebulun Takwa said Nigeria must invest in peace.

“The return of polio in the north-eastern Nigeria has been facilitated by the Boko Haram crisis and we are now spending hundreds of millions of naira to try to combat it.

“If ministries, departments and agencies had been spending just five per cent of their budgets in supporting peace-building, we would have re-oriented the minds of the citizens.

“Peace should not be a slogan for rhetoric, but we must all invest in it, and it involves money,” he said.

Azeez