ABUJA – The World Food Programme (WFP) and the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) are partnering to provide food for the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the North East.
The Executive Director of the WFP, Ms Ertharin Cousin, disclosed this while speaking to State House correspondents after the WFP delegation visited Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo on Wednesday, in Abuja.
She stressed the need for the international community to support the Federal Government’s initiatives to assist those affected by insurgency in the North-East.
“The World Food Programme (WFP) is working with NEMA now in support of the food assistance needs of those who have been displaced by the insurgency in the North East.
“There are 875,000 people who are food insecure in the North East today.
“Those numbers required that the international community begins to support the activities that the government was implementing to assist those who do not have access to food.
“Our conversation today was about the work that we have performed in the North East, what we must do to scale that work up.
“But what was really exciting was the conversation evolved into a broader discussion of the opportunity for the WFP to support the governments in their efforts to increase agricultural production in the country.
“To support food system improvements across the country, to address the issues of nutrition as well as to support the capacity and strengthening of the government on the scale up of school meals as part of increased education.’’
According to the director, there is a sharing of information that will result in significant benefit for food insecure people in the country and in the WFP’s ability to help the government to serve those needs.
“We work in partnership with the government. There is nothing that we are doing there that is independent of the government.
“This is a very different operation than the traditional WFP operation, where we design a programme, we come in, and we implement that programme.
“This is a programme that the government designed that we are supporting the government and the implementation of that programme.’’
Cousin said that the organisation brought in the United Nations Humanitarian Air Service that helped to address the challenges of moving humanitarian staff from Abuja into Maiduguri.
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`She said that WFP had in place a food distribution programme providing food assistance to those inside the camps.
The director said that WFP had begun a cash distribution programme as a social safety net programme for the the internally displaced persons.
“The challenge is that the insurgency in the North has affected the robustness of markets by increasing the amount of cash that the displaced have in their possession.
“What we can do is to ensure that we are not only providing the food assistance needs but we are providing for the economic stability of the area that is required.’’
Cousin said WFP had performed such duties in partnership with NEMA.
“We have brought our assessment tools to strengthen the capacity of NEMA to perform assessments and we have performed joint assessments to target the population of who should receive those benefits,’’ she said.
The director said that there was a great excitement on the vice-president’s part about the possibilities for future engagement with the WFP about the government investing in WFP.
“WFP is 100 per cent voluntarily funded.
“The government is very interested in investing in the tools that WFP can bring to the country.
“To assist in the technical capacity and the operational strengthening work of not only NEMA but the Ministry of Agriculture as well as working with the social safety net programmes.’’ (NAN)