Date: 2012-09-12

We, the youths of Tsaragi/Share, have watched with alarm the efforts by certain elements in both our communities to create strife over needless border disputes between Share and Tsaragi. While it is gratifying to note that these efforts have failed as both communities continue to live in harmony, we feel compelled as concerned citizens and future leaders of our communities and indeed of our great state to re-emphasise our determination to live in peace and maintain good neighbourliness. Furthermore, we are embarrassed by the jeers of our compatriots in other neighbouring and distant communities who laugh at the perennial misunderstanding between our communities.

Our forefathers who deemed it fit for us to live together knew what they were doing. They, our forbearers, realised the value of good neighbourliness and chose to live together in peace and harmony, shunning rancour and bickering over land. Although we live in more modern times, the benefits of peaceful communal living which motivated them remain with us. All around the world, development has taken place only in communities that have pulled together their resources and will for collective good. Progress has only happened where there is peace; for it is only then that the market forces and the human resources necessary for economic development can merge to create well-being for our people. It is only a peaceful community that can attract investment or government patronage in terms of infrastructure.

For these historical and development reasons, we reject any attempt to ferment trouble between Share and Tsaragi. As brothers and sisters, we choose harmony and peaceful co-existence over communal strife. Going by the Yoruba proverb, it is the bones of youths that are used to stoke the embers of war. Therefore, we refuse to be used as cannon-fodder for other peoples' negative political objectives. Our lives and our futures are higher than the misguided personal aspirations of a few people from both our communities.

We know that our peoples are peace-loving and amiable. How else could we have lived together in peace and harmony all this while? Those who seek to stir the embers of discontent between Tsaragi and Share are faceless individuals from both communities who, ensconced in their distant residences in Abuja, Lagos and elsewhere, seek to manipulate us, the youths of Tsaragi and Share, into unnecessary strife. We reject these attempts to railroad us into communal strife and choose peace, dialogue and cooperation. Only these can secure and guarantee the jobs, infrastructure, and economic development that both Tsaragi and Share desperately need. In Tsaragi and Share, our vote is for peace.

Abdulmummin Isa and Ganiyu Ololade for Tsaragi-Share Youth Vanguard