By Olaide Ayinde
The Emir of Dass in Bauchi State, Alhaji Usman Othman has urged UNICEF to make use of traditional institutions for proper dissemination of its programmes.
Othman, also a first class emir made the call in Bauchi at a meeting aimed at addressing health and education related issues between the traditional rulers in the state and UNICEF Representative in Nigeria, Ms Christian Munduate.
He said that this was because the people, especially in the Northern part of the country revere the traditional leaders as they had so much trust in them.
The royal father stressed the need for the participants to chart a way forward in tackling challenges on maternal health, child survival and out-of-school children.
“Looking at the successes achieved by UNICEF after collaborating with traditional institutions, there came an initiative to expand the scope of the activities.
“We have six emirs across the 20 local government areas in the state, and next in the line of hierarchy are the District Heads who do supervise the village heads and the village heads also supervise the Ward Heads who oversee the cluster of households at the grassroots.
“You could see the chain of communication from top to bottom and bottom up approach, and this trust between the traditional institutions and the people in the community is so much that they do accept and agree to whatever we introduce to them.
“They have that trust that we can’t do anything that will be against their wish and that will destroy their lives or their means of livelihood.
“So, if you come to the north here, whatever you want to introduce, any new innovation that you have, it’s much easier to follow this channel of communications to our people than going alone to execute whatever you feel like doing,” he said.
Responding, Munduate said it was good to heard, learnt and understood the actual situation from the traditional leaders in the state.
She, however, assured them of UNICEF technical support, adding that each Emirate Council would have comprehensive reports of the locations of every school and primary healthcare facility in their domains.
According to her, this will help in identifying whether there are enough teachers and health workers in the facilities to enable the UN agency to come through collaboration with the state government in addressing the anomalies. (NAN)
