The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr. Betta Edu, has said that the federal government has secured the agreement of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to set up humanitarian response stations across the country in a bid to bring timely succour to victims of disasters.
While disclosing this to state house reporters in Dubai, UAE, after her interaction with officials of the Emirati government at the ongoing United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), she said Nigeria sought the assistance of the UAE to tackle humanitarian crises arising from insurgencies, particularly in the North East, as well as to end the endemic poverty in some parts of the country.
Edu stated that the UAE Red Crescent, which was equivalent to the Red Cross, was now ready to build a more resilient humanitarian response system across the country.
She said, “We have held a lot of interactions at different levels. Of course with the government of the UAE; that’s interacting with the Minister for Tolerance in the country, who happens to be a brother to the president. We spoke extensively about how we can work together to pull millions of managers out of poverty.
“We have had interactions with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) DG, who is one of our own. We have had interactions with the President of the Islamic Development Bank and it’s centered on humanitarian response and other poverty alleviation programmes that they can come in to support the country.”
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The minister, who linked humanitarian crises and poverty in most parts of Nigeria to climate change, said that it had driven people to insurgencies and caused security problems in the country.
She said the role of her ministry at the COP28 was, therefore, to “see how we can be part of the climate change adaptation, to get support to provide jobs for people to lift them out of poverty, to key into the Paris Agreement.”
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