Speaker commends world leaders summit on food crisis in N/East

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has expressed deep pleasure on the convening of World leaders in Oslo.

Dogara expressed his pleasure when donors pledged $672 to tackle food crisis in the north east for the next three years.

With the return of about one million internally displaced people since August 2015 and refugee returnees from neighbouring countries under way in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, the need to ensure their protection and access to them by aid agencies is critical.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) co-presented with the Federal Government led by Minister of Foreign Affairs Geoffrey Onyeama, a paper in Oslo on Friday outlining a vision for ensuring protection, access and lasting solutions for them, a UN statement said on Friday.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Oslo Humanitarian Conference on Nigeria and the Lake Chad Region was organized by Norway jointly with Nigeria, Germany and the UN.

“The two strategies of protection and solutions should go hand in hand.

“To do this we need access and this is a very big challenge,” the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, said at the conference.

The paper also noted that many protection issues in areas of displacement and potential return can contribute to violence and instability, and advocated for prioritizing measures to ensure physical security, freedom of movement and humanitarian access.

The document also proposed strengthened response to sexual and gender-based violence as well as protection of children from violence exploitation and abuse.

The donors forum also agreed on the need to address longer-term development requirements and to seek durable solutions for the crisis-hit countries in the vast region covering Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon.

According to UN estimates, about 17 million people are living in the most affected areas across the four countries.

Of the figure, about 10.7 million people are in need of immediate humanitarian assistance, with 8.5 million in north-eastern Nigeria alone, having suffered close to seven years of violence as a result of Boko Haram’s terrorism.