By SADIQ ABUBAKAR, Maiduguri –
Nigeria has more than 180 million inhabitants, making it the most populous country in Africa. It is also one of the poorest. Poverty, food insecurity and inadequate access to education and health care are particularly severe in the North-East.
The activities of the terrorist organisation like Boko Haram have drastically exacerbated the situation. Since 2009, there have been repeated violent attacks, especially in the state of Borno.
To date, more than 27,000 people have lost their lives in these attacks, and some 2.3 million have been displaced from their ancestral homes. The majority of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are now living in Borno and the neighbouring states of Yobe and Adamawa.
Consequently, the already weak health and education system has come under further strain through targeted attacks by Boko Haram, further limiting the resources available to IDPs and host communities. Basic infrastructural facilities such as potable water, energy and sanitation are overstretched, and the local markets can no longer provide sufficient food supplies to the population.
These developmental challenges and humanitarian needs exceed the current capacities of the Nigerian government, prompting the government to address these needs by engaging external support.
Recently, the living conditions of IDPs, host communities and those returning to their communities of origin in the states of Adamawa and Borno have improved.
Funded by the European Union (EU) and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) have rendered support to improving the living conditions of people in the two states, Borno and Adamawa. Working at the nexus between emergency relief and development cooperation.
The GIZ strengthened local institutional capacity to improve service provision in the long run and promotes self-reliance by boosting the resilience of the most vulnerable households.The programme targeted IDPs, host communities, returnees and return communities.
Through the rehabilitation of school, health, water, sanitation and hygiene and market-related facilities, the programme contributes to the improvement of basic service infrastructures.
But findings revealed that, the programme further promoted the resumption of agricultural and economic activities and fosters youth economic empowerment through vocational training support.
And to address the significant needs in the education sector, the programme was aimed at decreasing access barriers to education and to improve the quality of basic education through targeted systems strengthening support.
While through the Community Development Planning (CDP), the programme strengthened the relationships between local communities and leaders, government institutions and civil society.
The programme further forms part of BMZ’s special initiative: Tackling the root causes of displacement, stabilizing host regions, supporting refugees where the activities benefit both those who have been displaced as well as the host communities.
Apart from adopting a sustainable approach, the measures are designed to mitigate structural push factors responsible for conflict and displacement such as social inequality and a lack of prospects in the long term.
This programme also helped to improve the living conditions of displaced persons, host communities and communities of origin while fostering social cohesion with a view to stabilizing the region in the long term.
The Programme has however subsequently, reached about 113,000 direct and indirect beneficiaries through its various interventions where bout 43,000 people are benefiting from newly constructed or rehabilitated infrastructures, which include schools, health centers, boreholes, vocational training centers and storage warehouses.
While 15,600 children, 580 teachers and 20 educational managers have benefitted from different educational measures such as the provision of furniture and school reticulation, learning and teaching materials, professional development trainings and on the job coaching and mentoring.
Moreover, 960 vulnerable parents of registered pupils also received conditional cash transfers, skills and financial literacy trainings and income generating kits to ensure sustained income and retention of their children in school.
Investigation have also shown that, about 5,500 people have benefitted from the programme’s livelihood measures such as vocational skills development, agricultural trainings and provision of farm inputs and farming equipment.
Furthermore, 31,000 citizens are presently directly benefiting from water facilities, hospital equipment and rehabilitated warehouses as part of the efforts towards fostering social cohesion and participatory decision making while a total of 6,200 people were involved in Community Development Planning processes across Maiha, Mubi North and Mubi South Local government Areas of Adamawa State and Maiduguri Metropolitan Council in Borno State.
It is also on record that 380 officials of partner government ministries and agencies have received different types of trainings and ICT equipment to improve their planning capacities in their various sectors and enable them to provide better services to the people.
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