The Federal Government has given the reassurance that it will meet the October 2016 deadline for fixing the United Nations building that was bombed by insurgents in 2013.
This 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 both paid him a courtesy visit in his office last Tuesday, April 5th, 2016.
Responding to their plight of 1,900 UN Staff 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”.
Reiterating the present government was very conscious about security and terrorism, which according to him had been curtailed making 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 was also ravaged by insurgent 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”, he said.
Commenting on the observation made by UNDP that the present government would 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 had immensely supported Nigeria over the years, and also assured that they were unrelenting, enumerating 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; supporting 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.