The North East Development Commission (NEDC) has said that the people of the region and other stakeholders are optimistic that the decade-long Boko Haram insurgency would end by 2023.
The MD/CEO of the commission, Mohammad Alkali, said this on Monday in Abuja at a Consultative meeting on the North-East Stability and Development Master Plan (NESDMP) with representatives of the North East state governments.
He said that the masterplan was is a new model to develop the infrastructure and people in the region to serve as a model of development in the country and bring it at par with European and other developed nation in the world.
Alkali represented by Head, Monitoring and Evaluation, NEDC, Yusuf Kachako, said that the NEDC has done lots to boost security in the north east, using the good relationship with the military and other security agencies.
“On our part we tend to improve civil relationships with them. You cannot attribute most of the things happening in terms of security to NEDC. There is nothing we can do to solve this. But we can leverage on successes to implement programme and projects, to sensitize people on the way forward for success and sustainability.
“We can only support. We will leverage on security measures for that. We are optimistic that we will carry out the plan successfully,” he said.
Also, the Lead, Master Plan Segment, Dr. Kassim Gidado, who spoke on “North East Stabilization and Development Master Plan -The Journey So far and Next Steps” said that the stabilization plan that commenced in 2020 would end in 2030 and that all arrangements are being concluded on the plan and which would be released in January 2022.
“NEDC will implement this plan and there is a need to develop adequate capacity to actualize the goals. Sequel to this, the plan will be reviewed 2025 to review it towards 2030. The objective of this plan is to alleviate poverty and bring about transformation of the region to bring development. We want it to be at par with other regions by 2030.
“We want a thriving region with productive citizens and to ensure that 70 per cent of the citizens are productively engaged in the economic activities of the region,” Gidado said.
On nepotism and corruption, he said “We are building a robust system for monitoring and evaluation. To ensure that the plans go as planned. We will also sensitize the citizen to be involved.”
On insurgency, he said, “We believe that by 2023 the issue of insurgency will be behind us to achieve the goal, investment. Without dealing with that we can achieve it. The citizens are also positive that by that time insecurity will be a thing of the past.”
