Press Release: Insurgency: FG, DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS ADVOCATE MULTI DONOR-TRUST FUND FOR NORTH-EAST REGION A meeting at the instance of the National Planning Commission with the Development partners on the security challenges in the north-eatern region of Nigeria, has advocated for a multi donor - trust fund to address the challenges of insurgency in the region National Planning Minister, Dr Abubakar Sulaiman, explained that the meeting was organised to examine the current situation in the North-East region and fashion out ways to re-strategize and coordinate the various efforts aimed at achieving a better result and also to reach more of the Internally displaced persons in the region Dr Sulaiman was represented at the meeting by the Acting Secretary to the Commission, Bassey Akpayung, Other agencies of government responsible for disaster management such as; National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons and the State Security Services, were also in attendance at the meeting. The meeting also agreed that, implementation of the multi donor-trust funds should be in a short and long term strategy to effectively and adeqautely address the devastating effects of the insurgency, The Planning Minister lamented that; the activities in the North eastern part of the country are causing serious untold hardship to millions of people. Insurgency seems to be recurring in this part of the country but the scope, scale and impact of the current intrusion as well as the dexterity of the perpetrators is out of proportion to any previous one. The current insurgency, perpetuated by the Boko Haram sect was initially traced to the neighbourhood effects of the Arab Spring in the North Africa’’ Accordingly, he described the effects of the insurgency in the North –East as quite pervasive and devastating with the local economy paralyzed, lives and property wasted in an unimaginable scale. Dr Sulaiman also explained that, the Presidential Initiative for the North – East (PINE), seeks to develop a framework to coalesce efforts of the federal government to revitalize the economy of the North – East of Nigeria and leverage on the activities of the states and local governments as well as the Development partners and the initiative was expected to come up with a sort of Marshall plan that can then be used to mobilize support for targeted intervention funds. He therefore, called for deepening of interventions in the region and also reiterated the need to work in a better collaborative manner with all the stakeholders in the intervention activities. Representative of the DG of NEMA, Alhasan Nuhu in a presentation at the meeting, revealed that 868,000 thousand people were displaced in Nigeria both by flood and insurgency. He stated that the Federal Government through MEMA is providing medical consumables, ambulances, clean water and provision of boreholes for Internally Displaced Persons in various camps. UN representative, Jean Gull said that, UNCIEF has opened offices in Maiduguri, Borno State because Borno is the epicentre of insurgency. She stated that they are providing support to children to tackle malnourishment which she described as a challenge in the camps, as well as working to stamp out polio and Cholera in Nigeria. She also stated that they are supporting government in the safe school initiative and also called for collaboration with host communities on social security.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 19:40:22 +0000
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