The World bank has donated the sum of 50 million dollars to assist the six insurgent affected North-Eastern states of Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Bauchi, Taraba and Gombe under the FADAMA programme.
The Team Leader, Dr. Adetunji Oredipe who stated this while speaking to newsmen, said the reason for carrying out such project was to deal with the negative impact of insurgency that had affected the people in those states.
According to him, “the project is a combined effort of the Federal Government and International Community to revive livelihood in the North-East due to losses incurred as a result of the activities of insurgents.”
He said the World Bank was targeting 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.
He added that the purpose of the project was not just to reach out to the six affected states but to bring all key stakeholders and team players to be in the same page.
When asked why the project was been implemented under FADAMA 3, he replied that they saw FADAMA 3 as good platform that had established link in the rural areas, stressing “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.
He added that it would be in the presence of all the traditional rulers and that key actors of the community would be there “to identify 40 households that are basically agricultural households and the assistance would be disbursed.
On the issue of sustainability, he said “the World Bank has invested heavily in this and to compliment its efforts, both the federal and state government have shown lots of commitments to sustain the investment in the affected states.”
He, however, called on the beneficiaries, stakeholders and the staff “to be sincere with the future of these people and pledge to make the affected communities go back to farm in other to improve livelihood and help them restore what has been lost.”
Oredipe also disclosed that six more projects would be launched, including two in education, another two in health, one in agriculture and a bigger one worth 200million that would address issues across sectors.
