NW Mbororo Councillors sharpen advocacy skills

More than 30 Mbororo councillors in the North West region have been trained on advocacy skills to enable them communicate accurately the many issues that worry them.

This training was done during a workshop organised by the Mbororo Social, Cultural and Development Association, MBOSCUDA, in partnership with the Civil Society Strengthening Programme, PASC of the European Union. The workshop took place from March 17 to 19, 2015.

At the end of the three-day training, over 30 councillors out of the 47 invited identified key areas that need advocacy. The areas include poor representation of the Mbororos in decision-making avenues. Thus, they will need to meet with policy-makers, administrators, politicians and traditional authorities.

The second area was the poor management of transhumance zones. This, they noted, brought about the need to establish a policy that takes care of the interest of all users of transhumance zones in the North West region and finally the management of farmer grazer conflicts.

One of the participants, Dija Haro Baby, 2nd Deputy mayor of the Zhoa council in Menchum division, said that as a female Mbororo councillor she has learnt how to manage farmer grazer conflicts. Dija continued that, upon returning to her municipality, she would be able to educate the womenfolk especially for the Mbororo female children to go to school and learn how to be part of governance especially at the local level.

The councilor also stressed the need to integrate women in her community to be more proactive in development issues.

Another councillor of Bamenda III council, Hamadu Bawuro, said there was the necessity to identify issues as well as lobby and advocate on behalf of the respective constituencies.

The focus, he added, is on safeguarding the interest of the minority especially on where they can comfortably channel their complaints and have them addressed duly. He said the workshop touched on key issues affecting the Mbororo people in the region.

The Mbororo councillors were equipped to maintain a collaborative voice on behalf of their constituencies given that, they have unique problems wherever they find themselves. He highlighted the importance of educating the Mbororo communities to peacefully cohabit with their farming neighbours.

According to Jedo Duni of MBOSCUDA, the main objective of the workshop was to strengthen the capacity of the councillors to effectively engage in the decision-making process.

More particularly, he pointed out that, the specific objectives of the training were to assess the capacity and needs of Mbororo councillors in advocacy, improve their practical knowledge and skills on how to carry out an advocacy action, identify issues for advocacy within the Mbororo community and build advocacy strategies for each issue and finally develop an advocacy plan based on identified issues.

Jedo held that the Mbororos are a minority and because of that the various local councils have hardly reached them. So MBOSCUDA initiated a campaign on civic education in which Mbororos were registered as voters and also to seek to be voted.

The campaign led to the pulling of 97 Mbororos from three political parties, notably the CPDM, SDF and UNDP running for elective office.