… 2.1m Nigerians already captured
By Joyce Remi-Babayeju
The World Food Programme, WFP, has earmarked $2.5 billion to support President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Zero Hunger Programme under the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation.
The $2.5 billion WFP support is for a period of five.
Country Director of WFP, David Stevesson, made this known Tuesday when he led a team of the United Nations, UN agency to visit the Minister for Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr. Betta Edu in her office in Abuja.
Stevesson disclosed that 2.1 million Nigerians have already been captured as beneficiaries of the program with the hope to expand working with the minister of humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation.
Stevenson pledged WFP’s support to the Federal Government’s humanitarian and poverty intervention efforts including the food security agenda and the Zero Hunger Programme among others.
He said that the organization was excited by the robust drive of President Ahmed Bola Tinubu’s government to eradicate poverty and reduce humanitarian crises in Nigeria and Edu’s energy to accomplish a lot together.
Stevesson congratulated Dr. Edu for her appointment as Minister, and reiterated his commitment to give full support to humanitarian and poverty response Programmes.
“I’ve been very impressed in such a short time to hear about the Minister’s leadership, putting together the strategy for the ministry.’
“We talked about zero hunger, we talked about the humanitarian hubs in every local government area in the country, we talked about the world food programs, the potential to support those hubs through buying food locally and also assisting in the cash transfer and food. These are very impressive.”
“Let me announce here that the World Food Programme is committed to spending $2.5Billion To Fight Hunger in Nigeria in the next five years”, the WFP boss emphasized.
Dr Edu thanked the WFP Country Director for the gesture informed him that there are over 133 million people in Nigeria affected by multidimensional poverty, stressing that WFP’s intervention of $2.5Billion for five years “will go a long way to address some of the biggest challenges the country is facing, which is hunger”
According to the Minister, “Zero Hunger” is one of the projects her Ministry has initiated as part of poverty and humanitarian response efforts, and appealed to the WFP to key into it by working with the Ministry to achieve results.
Also, the minister intimated the WFP Country with the ministry’s Homegrown School Feeding which is one aspect of the Zero Hunger Project.
She disclosed that the Ministry will be working on different nutritional programs that will target both pregnant women, under five children, school feeding, feeding of persons who are affected by humanitarian crises, aged and the persons of concern, “including refugees in the humanitarian space.
“We have over 80,000 persons as refugees presently, in Nigeria. The state I come from alone, there are over 40,000 refugees and these are just those who are registered.”
Furthermore, she disclosed the innovation of humanitarian hub to be created in 774 in each local government across Nigeria.
