Osun, Kogi Most Peaceful States In Nigeria – Report

Osun and Kogi states were the most peaceful states in the country as at December 2017, a survey tagged “Nigeria Peace Index (NPI) Research Project” have shown.

The 37-page maiden report formally presented to newsmen Friday in Abuja by the Executive Director, Foundation for Peace Professionals (FPP), Ambassador Abdulrazaq Hamzat, also showed that despite the current wave of armed banditry and violence killings in Zamfara, the state has the least crime rate record as at the time the survey was conducted.

He said the aim is to gradually change Nigeria’s narrative from crisis and insecurity to peace and tranquillity, thus their measuring peace tendencies through foundational indices in the 36 states of the federation and that the data were for 2010-2016.

According to him the data were obtained from Police, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and other local and international governmental and non-governmental organisations.

He said the NPI is based on similar methodology with the Global Peace Index (GPI), United States Peace Index (USPI) and United Kingdom Peace index (UKPI) in series of national indexes.

“Osun State is the most peaceful state in Nigeria and it has greater tendency for peace based on its overall performance in the five broad indicators. While Osun didn’t come top in any of the five indicators, its overall score is the least violent. Kogi, Ekiti, Kwara and Imo state follow Osun as the five most peaceful states in Nigeria.

“Kogi State is second most Peaceful State in Nigeria and most peaceful in the North. Imo state is the most peaceful state in South east and 5th most peaceful in Nigeria. Akwa Ibom is most peaceful state in South-South, Kaduna in North West, Kogi in North Central, Osun in South West, Imo in South East and Taraba State in North East,” Hamzat said.

He said Yobe, Kebbi, Bauchi, Zamfara and Sokoto states were the five least peaceful states while Borno State was not considered due to insufficient data and the Boko Haram red light, hence Borno was consider the overall least peaceful.

He said the five broad indicators adopted for the survey were level of poverty (determined by the living standard in a state, their access to medicare and others), and crime rate (murder, manslaughter, suicide, general harm, assault, rape, slave dealing, armed robbery, kidnapping, theft, child stealing, arson and forgery among others).

Also were level of education (ratio of secondary school graduates seeking higher education), rate of human rights abuse (degrading treatment by law enforcement agents, unlawful arrest and detention, extrajudicial killings, domestic violence, communal clashes, disobedience of Court orders, human trafficking and threat to life among others) and level of incarceration (number of people in jail in each states of the federation).