The Japan International Agency for Corporation has commenced training on disaster recovery for officials of the North East Development Commission (NEDC) and local government officials on building trust and recovery from disaster.
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The Managing Director of NEDC, Alhaji Mohammed Alkali, stated this at the sensitization workshop on Community Building through collaboration with local government from the North-East Region on Thursday in Abuja.
The workshop is sponsored by the Japanese International Agency for Corporation (JICA).
According to Alkali, the Japanese Government through JICA has been supporting NEDC in capacity building for government officials at all levels.
“The Agency has been cooperating with us in terms of recovery from disaster, especially from their Hiroshima incident. Though we are different, we can learn some forms of recovery from disaster.
“Apart from capacity development, there are also other interventions they did for us like scholarships for NEDC officials as well as posting other officials and experts to the Commission for two years and we are expecting further collaborations.
“Most of these development partners’ interventions are for Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe. So we are expecting that the other three states in the North-East region of Bauchi, Taraba, and Gombe should be supported as well.
“So, these are the major areas we are working in line with JICA mandate to help us support the other three states as well as specific sectors like health and education,” the NEDC boss said.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Alkali was represented by the Head of Research and Planning in the NEDC, Prof. Bobboi Umar.
Similarly, Dr. Nasir Sani-Gwarzo, the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, said Japan had a long history of recovering from disasters and it is a community-based approach and building trust between government and the community to recover from disaster.
“We have a history of the partnership of understanding how they went through that disaster and how they recovered from it, and then how to share the experience.
“A part of the partnership is that our people went to Japan and saw the process of recovery. However, the issues are not the same, so, we cannot use the same approach to apply to our situation so we select the ones that are applicable to us.
“This workshop is for the Permanent Secretary of the Local Government and Chairmen of ALGON. There is another follow-up where we have the one for development officers that deals with community,” he said.
Sani-Gwarzo was represented by the Head of Planning, Research, and Statistics of the ministry, Alhaji Abubakar Suleiman.
Meanwhile, the Programme Officer in charge of Nutrition, Agriculture, and Peace Building in JICA, Dr. Umar Halilu, said the North East region is faced with insurgency and conflict for several years now.
“And JICA as a development Agency has experienced several countries in which we have an intervention in the recovery process from conflict.
“We are trying to share these lessons learned from those countries we had an intervention and to Nigeria’s context. That is why North East which is suffering from conflict is benefiting from this intervention.
“Largely, we believe that the local government is very vital to ensure development in the communities because these groups of people are the closest to the community.
“So, one thing we try to do is to change the attitude of governance within that aspect of local government.
“We try to share experience how the LG can build trust between them, the service providers and the beneficiaries which are the community people, and to build this trust the community has to be involved in the decision-making and planning process,” Halilu said.
