By Chimezie Godfrey
The government of Turkey has indicated interest in cooperating with the Nigeria in areas of Humanitarian response and mitigation.
The Ambassador of Turkey in Nigeria H. E. Mr Hidayet Bayraktar made this known on Tuesday when he paid a courtesy visit to the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development Sadiya Umar Farouq in Abuja.
Ambassador Bayraktar said that Turkey has sent various humanitarian assistance around the world including Somalia, Afghanistan and some other African countries, in a bid to cushion the aftermath of the crises in the areas.
He sought the collaboration of the Ministry to achieve more in areas of humanitarian mitigation and responses in Nigeria.
“We have so many humanitarian assistance programs within the world from Afghanistan to Somali and to other African countries as well. Turkey is one of the humanitarian key players and up till now, we are expecting to assist about several countries which need humanitarian assistance.
“We hope we can find a way to cooperate or help render any assistance in terms of disaster and humanitarian crisis going on around the world. We will send humanitarian assistance over there.
“We are ready to work with your ministry in all these fields to see what we can achieve together to enrich this cooperation and relation between our two countries”.
Responding, the Humanitarian Affairs Minister, Sadiya Farouq thanked the government of Turkey for their various humanitarian assistance around the world.
Farouq stated that the Ministry will collaborate with Turkey and also learn from their wealth of knowledge in areas of coordination, mitigation and response to disaster prone areas in the country.
“I will like to commend the government of Turkey for actively ensuring that humanitarian assistance is given to countries facing different types of disasters irrespective of their religion or race. I’m also aware that the government of Turkey has an endearing tradition of providing humanitarian action to those in need. This practice emanates from your history and culture.
“Our main focus is on the coordination aspect of ongoing responses and providing policy direction and solutions to these agencies under the ministry while ensuring that we have effective cooperation between the relevant MDAs with a view to mitigating all the responses.
“We hope to work together to have a very effective collaboration and partnership and learn from your expertise . The ministry also links humanitarian and sustainable development solutions which provide inclusivity in traditionally marginalized poor and vulnerable people in this country and we also have programmes geared towards alleviating poverty in the country, so I look forward to a very fruitful collaboration with the government of Turkey in these areas”.
The Turkey government extends its humanitarian assistance not only at the bilateral level but also through international organizations such as the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs OCHA and the World Food Programme WFP.
According to Global Humanitarian Assistance report, Turkey has continued to be the biggest donor country of the world with an official humanitarian aid of $8.3 billion US dollars.
