FG seeks collaboration with foundation to address poverty and humanitarian crisis

Federal government is seeking the collaboration of development partner, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in the management of humanitarian crisis and poverty alleviation in the country.

Speaking when delegates of the foundation visited the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation on Thursday, the Minister, Dr Betta Edu expressed optimism that the foundation will assist Nigeria in the fight against poverty.

Confirming the achievements of the foundation on relevant issues in the past, the Minister said “your organization is rather very proactive and responsive to issues that had to do with the country and of course with its Citizens, and you have that flexibility that allows government priorities to become your priorities flowing in the direction of the government”.

She urged the foundation to work with the Ministry to tackle the various humanitarian crisis ravaging the country.

She said, “We have a huge task on our hands, as we speak now over 16 million Nigerians are affected by humanitarian crises, either man-made or the natural disasters. Of course, security issues, pockets of unrest in different areas have not made this any better. Other natural disasters like the flooding, which we are presently going through, and the opening of a Dam in another country, which will have its own effect on Nigeria is another call for attention to ensure that people are catered for. We have these unrest in all the neighboring countries – in Cameroon, in the southern part of Cameroon that have over 46,000 refugees coming into Nigeria. So there are over 36,000 in Cross River. We have a whole lot into Taraba and Benue, along that border.

“We are dealing with order crises in Niger, having people coming to Sokoto, Kano, Katsina and all of that. This is an addition to Nigerians that are refugees in this country and the migrants that were trying to go through the Niger and Libya and got stocked around the border. So it’s a whole lot as it concerns the humanitarian crises and what we need to deal with as a Ministry.

“But now the bigger one is here, which is poverty alleviation. We have over from the last statistics done by the Bureau of Statistics, it says that about 133 million Nigerians are poor, that’s multi-dimensional poverty, and then about 70 million of these people are extremely poor. So, they’re basically living below $1.95 cent per day. The President is committed to SDG which is raising these people out of poverty by 2030 and we need your help. We need your help!
That’s a lot of work and I just thought it was important to get you to the table at the foundational stage.

“First, we would need a lot of technical help. Technical help to see that we can draw a baseline, set the agenda and come up with programmes and projects that can be implemented to really lift people out of poverty while addressing the humanitarian needs.

“Secondly, we would also need lots of financial help in terms of supporting programmes, supporting processes, and helping with implementation.
While it starts with one of the innovations we want to put on board, that’s the Presidential Humanitarian and Poverty Alleviation Trust Fund, we need to be able to go full-blown into a robust resource mobilization; move that can help us pull together funding into one basket that will be used to address both the humanitarian crises and the poverty alleviation programs and projects without necessarily going through the bureaucratic bottlenecks of government”.

The Country Director, Bill&Millanda Gates Foundation, Jeremie Zoungrana, pledged the foundation’s willingness to partner with the Ministry and assured that it will use its wide contact to link up the ministry with strategic partners in specific areas to eradicate poverty in Nigeria.