Director-General of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Mr Mustapha Habib Ahmed, on Thursday, reiterated the Agency’s commitment towards the actualisation of the Sahel Resilience Project with a view to curb disaster risks in Nigeria.
The NEMA helmsman gave the assurance in Abuja while addressing the delegation from the Embassy of Sweden in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and the project implementation team from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Nigeria.
Justifying the commitment, the NEMA Director-General said it was “in tandem with the Federal Government agenda of building resilience to Disaster risks and improving the livelihoods of Nigerians under President Muhammadu Buhari.”
Noting the benefits of the sahel project, he said: “the Sahel region, with its distinctive fragile ecosystem and economy driven by extreme weather condition, 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.
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“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 added.
Mr Ahmed also 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.
In her remarks, the Team Lead, Ms Annar Tjarvar, who is the Counsellor and Program Manager Environment, Climate Change and Renewable Energy at the Embassy of Sweden in Addis Ababa in her remarks said the visit was part of the efforts to promote the trans-border implementation of the Sahel Resilience Project.
She 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.