Obi: Advocacy on Women’s Rights Will Address Gender-based Violence
Ugo Aliogo and Loveth Chinagorom, engaged the Country Director, ActionAid Nigeria, Mrs. Ene Obi, on scaling public investments in agriculture, and the issues of gender-based violence, as well as the cholera response project in Bauchi State, among other issues. Excerpts
ActionAid is currently working in Bursari LGA of Yobe State and plans have been concluded to start work in Marte, Abadam and Guzamah LGAs, Borno State. What is your assessment of the living conditions of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in those areas? Are you collaborating with any organisation or agency of government to carry out your intervention efforts?
The conflict in the North-east of Nigeria has lasted for over a decade. The peak of the crisis was between 2009 and 2016. There have been improvements on all sides including security, response to the need of the people who are displaced and living in camps or host communities and even those who are not displaced but have been largely affected by the insurgency.
One of the major concerns of the current Governor of Borno State is the destruction of rural life in Borno. As of now, Aid agencies such as ActionAid have continued to provide life-saving emergency support to those in great need, and also the support that helps the communities recover and build back with dignity.
ActionAid believes in working together with the affected persons, the government, sister organisations and this has remained integral in our approach. We are working with community groups, displaced persons, various state governments in the Northeast and partnering with state, national and international actors. Just to point out that we had plans of working in Marte, Abadam and Guzamala with support from the World Food Programme (WFP) but due to access constraints, in consultation with the state government, we had to put on hold those plans for now. We are currently supporting with food assistance in Bursari LGA of Yobe State.
How much effort is ActionAid putting in place to tackle food security of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Marte, Abadam and Guzamah LGAs, Borno State and Busari in Yobe State? In terms of improving their conditions, are you providing psycho-socio support to these IDPs and what is the response level like so far?
ActionAid Nigeria has worked to improve the food security needs of households affected by the insurgency. Specifically for our food security and livelihood interventions, we are currently working in Jere, Konduga, Kaga, MMC in Borno State and Bursari LGA in Yobe State. And like I said earlier, we have plans of going into Guzamala, Abadam and Marte but had to suspend those due to access constraints. We are supporting communities with livelihood, trainings, and in-kind food assistance. We always integrate Psychosocial Support (PSS) into all our programmes; including standalone PSS programmes.
We have seen great results in our work; children who were severely malnourished come into our programme and become happy children because they have been supported with nutrition supplements. We have been able to place children into foster homes, those who were separated from their families and were unaccompanied. The results are enormous, and we are very happy to do this.
We are currently supporting the operationalisation of the Humanitarian Development and Peace Nexus across the BAY States (Borno, Adamawa and Yobe) because the region we believe must overcome her current challenges and build back even better and for this to happen, all actors and sectors must work together.
There is an emergency cholera response project in Bauchi State. What is the level of commitment in addressing the health challenge? Would you say appreciable progress has been recorded so far, and are you impressed with the interventions you are making in Bauchi State or is there need to rejig your strategies?
The Cholera outbreak in Bauchi State reached a crescendo in May 2021, when the daily average positive case was at 120. Prior to this time, the state government and some other stakeholders had mapped out strategies on how to combat the continued spread of the disease, but with little or no funds to action out the strategy.
With the timely intervention from ActionAid Nigeria emergency response and funding from Start Fund, there has been a drastic reduction in the daily infection rate. According to the Bauchi State Primary Health Care Agency, responsible for the coordination of interventions, the current daily infection rate has dropped from between 60 – 80.
ActionAid Nigeria grassroot sensitisation, household disinfection, engagement with relevant authorities, trainings and deployment of strategic communication played key role in the current reduction in the spread of the disease. The highest record of infection rate was recorded in Bauchi LGA and this infection rate has reduced because of the intervention.
However, just like any other emergency intervention, ActionAid Nigeria’s Cholera intervention in Bauchi State has a short time limit, which has currently elapsed, but we are working with other relevant state and non-state actors to maintain the tempo even as we work to seek more intervention funds towards the eradication of the scourge.
In November 2019, you continued your intervention project on migration in Edo State tagged: ‘Dare to Hope’. What was the focus of the project, and what was the level of success achieved in the first phase of the project?
The Dare to Hope project is focused on building economic alternatives to migration for young people who have returned from destination countries such as Italy and Spain (and potential migrants).
As you are aware, it is a fact that Nigeria currently is ranked the fifth nation in the world for number of citizens migrating to Europe in search of better living conditions or in the effort to escape poverty and conflicts.
The leading cause for this huge movement of a portion of the Nigerian population is the search for income alternatives by Nigerians for themselves and their families. Current statistics show that over 50% of Nigerian youths are either unemployed or underemployed. For us, this is rooted in the conviction that unemployment represents one of the main causes of forced migration.
The creation of an alternative to migration through socio-economic development, sensitization and conflict prevention project was conceptualized and implemented specifically to tackle the root causes of irregular migration such as unemployment; by training, equipping and mentoring youths on agriculture, auto- mobile repairs, carpentry/ furniture, tailoring, shoe-making, bag-making, cosmetics, aluminum works so that they can engage in economically viable and productive activities. The second phase of the project is scaling up to reach more of the young people (returnees inclusive) who are susceptible to poverty or crisis-induced migration.
How do we scale public investments in agriculture both from the political and budget commitment angles?
Scaling public investments in agriculture requires moving from policy to action. As approved by the 44th National Council on Agriculture and Rural Development (NCARD); the three tiers of government should commit 10 per cent of their annual budget to the agriculture sector to meet the 10 per cent Maputo/Malabo Declaration required to support at least 6 per cent growth rate for the sector as postulated in the CAADP framework.
There should be political will to allocate at least 10 per cent of annual budgets and actuals of revenues to the agriculture sector with appropriate budget lines so that Nigeria will be on track in the next Biennial Reporting to the African Union Heads of States and Government in line with the Malabo Declaration and Commitments of 2014.
Federal and state governments should allocate more public investments in agriculture to address the strategic areas of investments that would increase the agricultural GDP to at least 6 per cent. The strategic areas of investments include extension services, access to credit, women in agriculture, youth in agriculture, appropriate labour-saving technologies, inputs, postharvest losses reduction supports (processing facilities, storage facilities, trainings, market access, and others), Climate Resilient Sustainable Agriculture (CRSA)/Agroecology, research and development, monitoring and evaluation, as well as coordination.
Access to credit and financial services (from government and nongovernmental channels) by smallholder farmers particularly women are very poor at an average of 43 per cent in Nigeria. The criteria to access formal financial credits schemes and programmes can neither be understood nor met by over 70 per cent of smallholder women farmers. This is due to high level of bureaucracy; complexity of application processes, failure of state and local government to provide application supports to farmers, poor literacy level of most of the women, and the failure of the credit managers to adopt credit models that take cognisance of the farmers’ realities and take advantage of the traditional savings cooperatives which these women already belong to.
FMARD, states ministries of agriculture, and local government councils should play an active role in ensuring more public awareness on the various agricultural credit schemes in the country. They should create yearly budget line with the agriculture budget on strengthening access to credit to offer handholding technical assistant to smallholder farmer cooperatives especially women cooperatives to ensure proper documentation of applications, meeting loan criteria, make loan submissions, coordinating loan management, and overseeing repayment programmes.
The states and local government councils should better coordinate and play an interface role between the smallholder farmers and credit administrators. This is another window where Public-Private Partnership can come in and State and LGAs should explore this window.
Government should invest in youth-friendly agriculture as a means of ensuring sustainable food security and as a means of reducing the alarming unemployment rate among them.
How should government strengthen accountability and transparency in the Home-Grown School feeding Programme (HGSFP)? Are you impressed so far with the way government is handling it?
The best way to strengthen the HomeGrown School Feeding Programme is for the government, at all levels, to strengthen its monitoring structures. The experience of the series of sharp practices noticed in the programme calls for this.
Secondly, the government needs to sign the Social Investment Programme (SIP) into law so that successive governments can sustain the robust and highly beneficial programme. Thirdly, the government must do everything possible to ensure that there is no break in terms of making payment to the cooks, because long delays affect pupils’ attendance in schools.
I am not really impressed by the way the government is handling the programme and not pleased with many citizens who are truncating the system. Lack of proper monitoring and delay in making payments to the cooks is seriously dragging the programme back. Citizens must take responsibility as well to ensure transparency and accountability in the process. Sometimes, the system can be truncated at the state level so all stakeholders must work together for more success to be achieved.
Can you give an insight into your work on social justice and governance accountability?
A good example of our work on social justice and government accountability is what we are doing with the Promoting Accountability and Transparency in the School Feeding Programme (PATS-F) PATS-F project. I believe that we are doing well to ensure that the child gets the rights and opportunities he/she deserves. The pupils deserve the right to education, therefore every effort of the government at ensuring that the child attends school is highly commendable and so, everyone has the right to hold the government accountable to ensure that the right thing is done, which is what we are supporting in the PATS-F. Our programme aims at ‘opening the doors of access and opportunity for everyone, particularly those in greatest need’.
The work we do from our governance thematic as well as Women’s Rights thematic areas respond to so many areas including series of projects on anti-corruption, public finance analysis and engagement with the parliament at different levels, gender-based violence, promoting women’s voices in representation and leadership, youth-focused interventions, tax justice, social mobilization, girl child education in breaking barriers, working with people with disabilities, work on elections, and using human rights-based approach to all the work we do.
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