By Nneka Nwogwugwu
Mr Muhammad Usman, the National Project Coordinator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Global Environment Facility (GEF) projects has given an overall report on the success of projects in 7 Nigerian states.
NatureNews recalls that the five-year programme is aimed at enhancing productivity and promoting sustainability and resilience of Nigeria’s agricultural production systems for better national food security.
The programme started in January 2018 and seven northern Nigerian states selected for the programme are Katsina, Kano, Jigawa, Gombe, Adamawa, Nasarawa and Benue.
These states were selected to support the drive of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Global Environment Facility (GEF), Women Farmers Advancement Network (WOFAN) and the Federal Ministry of Environment Integrated Landscape Management to Enhance Food Security and Ecosystem Resilience in Nigeria Project to ensure that food security in Nigeria is taken very seriously nationwide.
In a report by Usman, he said, “we only have little challenges from one or two states and we hope to address it.’’
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He said from the presentation of the reports the project had made a lot of achievements and the only challenges were in terms of counterpart funding and insecurity that had made the running of the programme slow.
According to him, the News Agency of Nigeria reports that the monitoring and evaluation team will set out in July to inspect the project and use the opportunity to interact with the state government and other government officials to resolve issues as regards funding, flood and security issues.
He said that the issue of security could only be handled by the concerned states, particularly those local government areas where banditry and terrorism had taken over.
Usman said the team would discuss with the state government to see if the project could be relocated from areas where the project was having challenges of insecurity to a more secure area.
He said the essence of the project was to create food security and environmental sustainability for all.
He however appealed to states not performing to scale up, and come up as the project was unwinding and there were lots to be achieved.
