From Okwe Obi, Abuja
The Director General, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Habib Ahmed, has assured the international community of Nigeria’s commitment to actualising the Sahel Resilience Project, in order to tackle natural disasters.
Ahmed made the commitment yesterday when a joint mission on the Sahel Resilience Project from the Embassy of Sweden in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and the project implementation team from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Nigeria, visited him in Abuja.
In a statement by the Head of Media and Public Relations, Manzo Ezekiel, the Director General said: ‘In tandem with the Federal Government agenda of building resilience to disaster risks and improving the livelihoods of Nigerians under President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR.
‘The Sahel region, with its distinctive fragile ecosystem and economy driven by extreme weather conditions, poverty, insecurity, political unrest, terrorism and climate change phenomena will no doubt drive immense benefit from this intervention project.
‘Moreover regional development as envisioned in the Sahel Resilience Project will surely engender global positive impacts in Nigeria and will also permeate the entire Sahel states of West Africa.
‘This is bearing in mind that even under normal circumstances Nigeria serves as the centre of gravity for commerce, industry, immigration and exchange of goods and services for the entire West Africa sub-region,’ he said.
He commended the Government of Sweden for being the sole sponsor of the project which is expected to strengthen disaster risk reduction and build the resilience of the greater Sahel Region and Nigeria in particular.
The Team Lead, Annar Tjarvar who doubles as the Counsellor and Programme Manager, Environment, Climate Change and Renewable Energy at the Embassy of Sweden in Addis Ababa, said the visit was part of the efforts to promote the trans-border implementation of the Sahel Resilience Project.
Tjarvar further said that the visit was aimed at engaging relevant stakeholders on implementation strategies of Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Change adaptation as well as the progress made on the SENDAI framework Monitor and implementation policy in Nigeria.