By Chimezie Godfrey
The Minister, Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouq, has expressed the intention of the Ministry to partner with the ECOWAS Commission in the area of technical and capacity building for the staff of the Ministry.
The Minister stated this on Friday in Abuja, when she received the delegation of the ECOWAS team led by Dr. Fatima Jagne during a courtesy visit to the Ministry.
She stressed the need to partner with the ECOWAS on capacity building for the staff of the ministry in evidence based system, data collection and any other support which will also assist to take indigent children out of the street.
“I know that ECOWAS has been supporting the region especially in the area of education, security as well as early warning and response.
“The Ministry has some key priority areas of focus, one is to strengthen policy and institutional framework, the evidenced based system for optimizing funding resources and opportunities, mainstreaming the SDGS into our statistical planning and budget purposes as well as funding resource,’’She said.
Farouq pointed out that the Humanitarian Policy Dialogue Forum has been established to bring better coordination in the area of providing humanitarian intervention and responses in arm conflicts and in times of stabilization.
Earlier the ECOWAS Commissioner, Dr. Fatima Jagne disclosed that the ECOWAS Commission is fulfilling its humanitarian mandates with member states and citizens and would inform the ministry of the already established internal mechanism of humanitarian response plan, which covers immediate medium and long term plan to assist member states in responding to crisis.
She added that they would like to partner with Nigeria in finding lasting solutions to humanitarian crisis in the Sahel region, as Nigeria is a leading country in the region.
Jagne revealed that Nigeria will host the forth coming ministerial meeting of the four countries which are dealing with the same humanitarian issues in Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali.
