North-East: FG, UN
North-East: FG, UN Harmonize Plans for Humanitarian
Assistance
he Federal Government is
harmonizing the various frameworks/plans for humanitarian and
development assistance to the Northeast region into a costed
Multi-Year Humanitarian Development Nexus Plan (2019-2021), which
implementation is expected to commence in 2019.
This was disclosed in Abuja on
Tuesday by the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator
Udoma Udo Udoma, at a breakfast meeting organized to appreciate the
donors who pledged support for the Lake Chad Region during the Oslo
2 Conference in Berlin in 2018.
The Minister explained that the
Plan is being supported by the United Nations Development Programme
and other donors and will provide the basis for the harmonization
and layering of humanitarian, development and peace support, which
will also serve as Nigeria’s Implementation Plan for the
Northeast.
“It is hoped that the plan
to deepen stabilization and resilience will ride on financial
support through a Stabilization Facility to be set up in
collaboration with UNDP and all other interested donors and
partners,” he stated.
The Minister therefore called on all partners and donors to
strengthen collaboration with the government by directing efforts
at leveraging and strengthening the capacity of local actors and
systems to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable.
Senator Udoma explained that the breakfast meeting was arranged
so that the Federal Government can express its appreciation to
those who participated in the 2018 High Level Conference in Berlin,
Germany (Oslo II), particularly the donors who pledged their
support. “This was a very successful conference which resulted in
the receipt of pledges of very helpful and significant sums of
money for humanitarian and development assistance in the Lake Chad
Region. I thank all of you for your continuing support.”
The 2018 Conference was a follow-up to the first Oslo Conference
held in Norway in February 2017. The Minister recalled that the
2017 conference was the outcome of growing concern for the
humanitarian and other challenges experienced in the North East of
Nigeria and the whole of the Lake Chad region, caused by the
insurgency in the area.
Giving a background to the 2017 Conference, the Minister said
the scale of the problem was such that the countries of the Lake
Chad region needed some external assistance to fully address
it.
He pointed out that It was for that reason that Nigeria, working
together with the neighbouring States, found it necessary to
mobilise international awareness as to the humanitarian challenges
experienced in the North East Nigeria and the Lake Chad region and
the need to scale up support in order to be able to effectively
address these humanitarian challenges.
According to him, the two High Level Conferences were very
successful, as he recalled that at Oslo 1, pledges of USD$672
Million were received as financial support for 2017 while Oslo II
was more successful as pledges totaling US$ 2.17 billion were
received for activities in 2018 and beyond for the funding of
humanitarian and peace-building/development activities in the
region.
He re-iterated Federal Government’s determination to provide
durable solutions to the insurgency in the Northeast. “This was why
we launched the Buhari Plan in 2016 as the framework for engagement
in that region of Nigeria. This framework resulted in the setting
up of the Presidential Committee on the North-East Initiative
(PCNI) to coordinate the response in the region; the establishment
of Operation Safe Corridor to provide rehabilitation and
reintegration support to low-risk Boko Haram-associated persons,
and, more recently, the creation of the North-East Development
Commission (NEDC) to tackle the root causes of the crisis,” he
explained.
Stating President Muhammadu Buhari is committed to ending the
Boko Haram crisis in the Northeast, the Minister explained that the
Federal Government has been working in active collaboration with
the Governments of the neighboring Chad, Niger and Cameroon in
order to achieve this; and taken together, these concerted efforts
demonstrate strong political will in the four countries to address
the Lake Chad crisis effectively
“You will recall that in February 2018, Heads of States from the
sub-region converged at Abuja for the International Conference on
Lake Chad to explore regional solutions that would address the
diminishing water levels of Lake Chad. The conference resulted in
the endorsement of an inter-basin water transfer to recharge the
Lake, which would return the region to its hitherto, buoyant
economic activities and thereby address one of the root causes of
the crisis”, he stated.
The breakfast meeting was attended by high level officers of the
European Union and United Nations agencies in Nigeria including the
German Ambassador to Nigeria, Bernhard Schlegheck; his Norwegian
counterpart, Petter Kyemprud; European Union Head of Cooperation,
Kurt Cornelis; the Resident/Humanitarian Coordinator of United
Nations Systems in Nigeria, who was represented by the Head of
UN-OCHA, Ms Edem; the acting Country Director UNDP, Ms Betty; and
the Regional Director of UNIDO, Jean Bakole, among others.
Signed
Akpandem James
Special Adviser (Media) to the
Hon. Minister