The Federal Government has reassured that it will meet the deadline of October 2016 for fixing the United Nations building that was bombed by insurgent in 2013.The assurance was given by the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, while receiving a delegation of the United Nations Resident Coodinator and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative in Nigeria, Ms Fatma Samoura, who paid him a courtesy visit in his office, Tuesday, April 5th, 2016
Responding to their plight that 1,900 UN Staff are presently suffering office accommodation inconveniences, Udoma said “Our government is sorry about the present UN Office accommodation inconvenience. I shall effectively liaise with the Federal Capital Territory Administration and Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ensure that the October 2016 rebuilding deadline of the Nigeria’s UN building is met, all that is required for the staff to move into the building will be addressed”.
He added that the present government is very security conscious, terrorism, he said has been curtailed and Nigeria is a safer place today.
Udoma further commended the UNDP over their efforts and assistance towards the rehabilitation of the North Eastern Region of Nigeria, that is also ravaged by insuregent attacks.
“We note with satisfaction your efforts to help Nigeria rebuild the north eastern states, it is our biggest challenge today, we want to restore normalcy in that region, fix all the inhuman destruction done by Boko Haram and get the affected population back to their vital agrarian livelihood”
Commenting on the observation made by UNDP that the present government strives would really fix the economy, Senator Udoma responded “ vagaries of oil prices has challenged government, we want to run government from non-oil revenue sources, develop our infrastructures and other vital sectors namely agriculture, solid minerals and manufacturing”
Earlier, the UNDP Resident Representative, Fatma Samoura, revealed that the UN System has immensely supported Nigeria over the years, and also assured that they are unrelenting.
She enumerated some of the support areas to include; technical assistance on zero based budgeting preparation, development and installation of the Development assistance Data Base (DAD) Phase I for tracking and management of Aid inflow from development partners in the Country; support the coordination of development partners in the country through the National Donors’ Consultative Forum; Support to the National Aid Coordination Secretariat hosted by the Ministry of Budget and National Planning to strengthen the Aid coordination system at the states level and also, the UNDP support to INEC Electoral Reforms Project through the Democratic Governance for Development (DGD) Project support to the macro economic Analysis Department in the flag off of States GDP computation and sensitization programme, among others.
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Charles Dafe
Director (Information)
