By Ediale Kingsley
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt Hon Yakubu Dogara, has expressed deep pleasure on the convening of World leaders in Oslo, Norway, which saw donors pledging $672m to tackle food crisis in the north east for the next three years.
In a statement issued by his Special Adviser on Media & Public Affairs, Mr. Turaki Hassan on Saturday, Dogara said he is heartened by the initiative and collective will of spirited leaders and donors across the world to tackle food crisis in the North East.
“This is a welcome development and I will use this medium to once again reiterate our call for the convocation of a bigger Donor Summit that will see to the rebuilding and rehabilitation of the region”, he said.
Going further, he added, ” On our part, as a Legislature and Government, we owe a duty to the international Community to set up solid and permanent legal framework to manage the resources donated or contributed for the development of the North East.”
The food crisis summit was convened to fashion ways to stump up funds to prevent a food crisis in the North-East Nigeria, thereby preventing a re-occurrence of the famine in The Sudan.
The event – hosted by the Norwegian, Nigerian and German governments and the UN – will bolster relief efforts in the next three years.
The summit’s host country, Norway, led efforts by pledging $192m of the $672m promised by international donors for the next three years and organisers said further contributions are expected later this year from the United States and United Kingdom.
While this year’s global humanitarian appeal for Nigeria – at present 1.8% funded – is at an early stage, last year’s appeal is only a little more than 50% funded. The UN and humanitarian agencies say $1.5 billion is needed to cater for about five million people.
Dogara has been in the forefront of the campaign for convening of a donor conference for a total rehabilitation and reconstruction of the North East region of Nigeria, whose people and livelihood, mainly agrarian, have been destroyed by long activities of Boko Haram terrorists.