From Dan Garba, Yola
The World Bank has donated $50 Million to assist the six insurgent-hitNorth-Eastern states of Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Bauchi, Taraba and Gombe under the FADAMA programme.
The Task Team Leader Dr. Adetunji Oredipe, who stated this while speaking to reporters said the reason for carrying out theproject is to deal with the negative impact of insurgency that have affected the people in those states.
According to him, the project is a combined effort of the Federal Government and theInternational Community to revive livelihood in the North-East due to losses incurred as a result of the activities of insurgents.
He said World Bank has target 600 communities and 24,000 households in the North-East region of Nigeria.
“Our idea is to work with 600 communities in the six states and we have agreed to do more in the directly affected states; Borno, Yobe , Adamawa and do a little in Taraba, Bauchi and Gombe who are the receivers of the displaced people”, Oredipe stated.
“For us as World Bank, you know we are not into humanitarian programme, but we support activities based on needs,” he added
Oredipe added that the purpose of the project is not just to reach out to the six affected states but to bring all key stakeholders and team players to be on the same page of what the project intend to achieve and how to go about the implementation and approach exercise.
When asked why the project is been implemented under FADAMA 3, Oredipe replied that they saw FADAMA 3 as good platform that has established link in the rural areas to run initiative that is why we use such platform to reach out to farmers affected by insurgency in rural communities .
On how they tend to reach out to the exact beneficiaries, he said there would be an open and transparent process where people would meet at the village square with the presence of all the traditional rulers and key actors of the community would be there to identify 40 households that are basically agricultural households and the assistance would be disburse.
On the issue of sustainability, he said the World Bank had invested heavily in this and to compliment their efforts, both the federal and state government have shown lots of commitments to sustain the investment in the affected states.
The task team leader however called on the beneficiaries, stakeholders and the staff to be sincere with the future of the affected people and pledged to make the affected communities go back to farm in other to improve their livelihood and help them restore what had been lost.
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