The federal government is set to domesticate the African Union Kampala Convention protocol for the protection and assistance of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).
The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, disclosed this during the Ministry Open House and the launch of the National Policy on IDP that was approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in September 2021.
The Minister used the opportunity to read out the Ministry scorecard on various program and projects.
Goodwill messages were delivered by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, who was represented by Hon Muhammad Jega; the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Bashir Nura Alkali, who was represented by the Director, Humanitarian Affairs, Alhaji Ali Grema, National Commission of Persons with Disabilities, James Lalu and the United Nations Resident Coordinator, Matthias Schmale, who pledged continuous support for the ministry in areas concerning IDPs.
Below are excerpts from the Ministers Speech:
“You will recall that the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development was established in 2019 by his excellency President Muhammad Buhari to effectively coordinate the administration strategic response to humanitarian challenges in the country. The creation of ministry was necessitated by the compelling need to harmonize, synergize and institutionalize, as well as provide coordination of all government humanitarian and social interventions
“The activities of the ministry have a direct impact on the wellbeing of poor and vulnerable Nigerians and contribute to the social economic development of the country. Understandably, this has placed the ministry in a close friendship with the media sector in Nigeria, in humanitarian actors, civil society organizations collaborating ministries, departments and agencies and the general public in order for the ministry to effectively provide desired and much needed coordination and leadership, it was conceived to provide. It must have a means of effectively and consistently communicating its activities progress, and the challenges that were faced by directly engaging with these partners, stakeholders and the general public. And it is against this background that the Humanitarian Open House is being hosted with the theme “Coordinating for Durable Humanitarian Solutions the Journey So Far”. the theme has been carefully chosen to allow the ministry to speak on its coordinating efforts, program of activities and achievements recorded as well as the milestones being attained, results being delivered, and more importantly, the direct impact the ministry and indeed government is making in the lives of Nigerians.
“Since inception We have achieved a lot in the area of the provision and effective coordination of humanitarian interventions in keeping with our mandate. We have also been able to provide coordination through cooperation and partnerships with relevant government agencies, development partners, UN agencies, and other strategic partners. This is all in a bid to ensure sustained and expanded social protection programs, prompt emergency response services, and appropriately targeted humanitarian interventions. The national social investment program is the biggest social protection and poverty or education program ever put in place by any government in Nigeria. And one of the biggest in Africa, it was established by his Excellency President Mohammadu Buhari in 2016 to address immediate and long-term socioeconomic imbalances and any inequalities, elevate poverty and stimulate economic growth,
“The nation’s social investment program has four main clusters, 1. the NPOWER, 2. the national homegrown school feeding program, 3. the conditional cash transfer and 4. the government enterprise and empowerment program.
“Each of these programs has been carefully designed to address specific social economic challenges and protect Nigerians from poverty, economic shocks and social vulnerabilities by increasing the income and livelihood of poor and vulnerable households, reducing youth unemployment, increasing access to education and health services, eradicating malnutrition in school-aged children and improving enrollment of school aged children and providing affordable credit for micro small and medium enterprises.
“In addition to this, the federal government in partnership with the World Bank established the National Social Safety Net Programs, which created for the first time, the national social register of the poor and vulnerable household and individuals nationwide. The ministry under the NPOWER program successfully exited the 500,000 batch A and B NPOWER beneficiaries in 2020, and received about 6.4 million applications for the batch C, from batches A and B a total of 109,822 beneficiaries have gone on to set up businesses in their communities, underlining and highlighting the impact and importance of the NPOWER program on there by C stream one, there are 510,000 individuals currently enrolled and benefiting from the program while an additional 490,000 beneficiaries will be on enroll, following presidential approval to increase the number to 1 million.
“What this means for the economy is that 1 million young people will be equipped with requisite skills in different fields in the next one year to hands on and on the job exposure, training, and experience. So, they can be equipped to start their own businesses or secure job space on the experiences they will gain on the program. This will also translate into the emergence of micro, smaller, medium enterprises that will contribute to the economy and provide means of livelihoods for the honors and others they will employ while contributing to the overall goal of raising a pool of qualified and experienced workforce that can provide corporate success and economic growth.
“The ministry recently, flagged off the training of the exited NPOWER Beneficiary is known as the Nexit, which is a program where exited beneficiaries are trained with the CNB provided loans to enable them start businesses of their own so that they can become employers of labours. So, in a bid to bridge the gap between the rural communities and desired financial services required, the ministry came up with the Mobile Money Agents Program. The program is a nationwide effort under the N power, which trained and equipped 1850 agents with tools such as Point Of Sales Machines, with a startup amount of N20,000 preloaded fingerprint scanner, plastic chair, plastic table, outdoor umbrella, and a head cover ledger.
“Next is the National Homegrown School Freedom Program, which is currently operational in 35 states and the Federal Capital Territory, which arrangements for the onboarding of Bayelsa in advanced stage. It was introduced in 2016 to provide one free nutritious meal to children in primary one to three across public schools nationwide. Presently, almost 10 million children in 54,619 schools are benefiting from this creative program with 120,000 cooks, about 100,000 smallholder farmers and numerous aggregators all also benefiting from the program across the country. Recently, we reviewed the cost of feeding each child from N70 to N100 meal per day, as approved by his Excellency Mr. President.
“On the Conditional Cash Transfer, This involves the financing of safety nets transfers to targeted poor and vulnerable households included in the national social register. delivering regular and reliable transfers in a way that is accessible to beneficiaries, with benefit levels that are consistent with project objectives. This provides targeted multi based price transfer of N5,000 to the eligible poor and vulnerable households mined from the national social register, which transfer is designed to help improve their consumption levels and to encourage them to develop lifesaving skills. The overall objective of this program is aimed at reducing poverty, preventing the vulnerable households from becoming poor and building their ability to be better than what they were before they started benefiting from the program.
“The conditional cash transfer also serves as a buffer for economic shocks and caters for household consumption needs. Besides disbursement of stipends to beneficiaries, they are also encouraged and guided to form cooperatives among themselves for the purpose of contributing and saving a portion of their stipends into a collective course, which they will invest in micro businesses, the process of which members of the cooperative collectively can benefit from. In addition, they are provided with capacity building training in the areas of savings and group mobilization, life skills, micro-business development plan, livelihood activities, as well as co-orientation and nutrition training for core responsibility.
“Enrollment of beneficiaries into this program commenced in 2017. And as at April, 2018, the program had enrolled a total of 261,501 beneficiaries, beneficiaries were entered into the Beneficiary Register across the across 19 states. As at 25th, November, 2021, a total of 1,928,374 beneficiary households have been enrolled into the National Beneficiary Register nationwide. This is a pointer to success. The program has achieved in line with the president’s vision of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty by the year 3030.
“The next is the government enterprise and empowerment program, which aims at addressing the challenges of credit and financial inclusion for the over 37 million Nigerians at the base of the economic pyramid who are involved in active commercial activity, butt have never had the opportunity to access loans, this program has so far provided incremental loans of between N10,000 and N300,000 to about 2.2 million beneficiary traders, artisans, enterprising groups, agricultural workers, and other microservice providers under the flagship programs of Trader Money, Market Money And Farmer Money.
“Trader Money caters to poor vulnerable enterprising youths, while market money caters to poor and vulnerable enterprising women. And both components disperse N50,000 per beneficiary. Poor rural farmers are captured under Farmer Money and the loan amount is N300,000 The program is also increasing financial inclusion by onboarding beneficiaries into the formal financial system of banking. Registration of interested persons has been completed nationwide and digitization of data collected is ongoing, we shall commence the disbursement of the G 2.0 loans to successful beneficiaries very shortly.
“Today is a day specifically set aside for the ministry to engage with the media, strategic partners and stakeholders, and offer them the opportunity to ask questions, get clarity, and offer useful suggestions. By way of desired feedback, the Open House will encourage a nexus for discussion and interchange of ideas to enable the media practitioners report from an informed position, as well as provide stakeholders and partners, firsthand information they can share and disseminate across their various platforms. Through these programs, we hope to provide a more engaging platform for the ministry to lead the way through improved connectivity, enable more synergy and cooperation between and amongst stakeholders to support and empower more people create more possibilities, provide access to more solutions, make things happen faster and supported the growing ranks of people of concern to access more interventions. As an integral part of this
“I am pleased to present the Minister’s Information Brochure and the National Social Investment Programs Information Brochure. The information brochure is a one stop show of information book containing all the basic information on the ministry, its departments programs and agencies. Similarly, a pictorial compendium chronicling the programs, activities, and achievements of the ministries is presented. today, I’m also launching to the world the National Policy on Internal Displaced Persons, which was provided, which was approved by the federal executive council in September, 2021. As we are aware, the process of developing an adoption of the policy commences since 2001, and within this period, the initial draft of the policy has been reviewed severally to reflect new realities and emerging trends in the humanitarian space in Nigeria, this policy aims to provide a framework for national responsibility towards prevention and protection of citizens and in some cases, non-citizens, from incidences of arbitrary and other forms of internal displacement meeting their assistance and protection needs during displacement and ensure their rehabilitation, return, integration and relocation after displacement. The policies post out principles guiding human sharing assistance and implementation of durable solutions, institutions of internal displacement in Nigeria, and have adopted the human rights-based approach and its principles are also integrated. the positions of existing international conventions, treaties and protocols on internal displacement guided by the dictates of international humanitarian and human rights.
“Thus, this policy, therefore draws extensively on the guidance of international and national frameworks on the prevention of internal displacement, as well as those on protection and assistance of internally displaced persons, the compiler convention, the UN guiding principles on internal displacement and fair minimum standard for humanitarian assistance have significantly defined the direction of this policy.
“This policy, envisions an equitable and stable Nigerian society that is proactive and responsive to situations that relate to internal displacement where the right to life of dignity is guaranteed for all internally displaced persons and where adequate measures and durable enjoyable solutions exist to prevent and mitigate the impact of internal displaced on vulnerable populations, to ensure efficient, effective implementation of the policy and charge the National Coordination Technical Working Committee and other relevant stakeholders to immediately commence elaboration of implementation plan would clear roles and responsibilities for all actors. The plan should incorporate a monitoring and evaluation strategy, which will ensure compliance with a policy framework and scope as well as determining the extent of achievement of policy goals and objectives.
“Furthermore, I wish to formally announce that we have commenced the stand-alone process of domesticating the African Union Kampala Convention, the relevant stakeholders are hereby charged to come up with the draft bill for onward presentation to the Federal Executive Council for approval and subsequent transmission to the National Assembly for necessary legislative actions. “