The Federal Government has welcomed the Sahel Initiative by the United Nations aimed at tackling development challenges of countries in the Sahel Region of Africa.
It noted that the security challenges ravaging the region had taken much of the resources that would have been channeled to development programmes.
The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, while receiving the Special Adviser in the Office of the Secretary General of the United Nation in charge of the Sahel Region, Mr Ibrahim Thiaw, in Abuja, said government considered the UN Sahel project a very important initiative.
He said it was gratifying to note that the United Nations was giving serious attention to the development of the Sahel and pledged Nigerian’s willingness to work alongside the other nine countries in the region to address the challenges of developing the region.
Udoma told the UN team that the more attention Nigeria and other afflicted countries in the region had from international bodies to resolve security challenges, the faster the countries could mobilize funds to deal with other issues challenging the rapid development of the area.
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The UN Special Adviser had told the Minister that the UN was particularly interested in what was happening in the Sahel Region, especially countries around the Lake Chad, and was concerned that the security challenges in the area were impeding economic development and increasing humanitarian challenges.
Worried by this state of affairs, Mr Thiaw said the Secretary General specifically requested the setting up of a special programme to deal with the challenges of the region.
He pointed out that although the UN and the African Union (AU) had routinely mobilised funds to tackle some of the challenges in the region, much of the funds went into security interventions rather than development programmes.
Pointing out that there were lots of potentials in the region, the UN special envoy said it was time the narrative in the region changed from the Land of Conflicts to the Land of Opportunities, “because there is a huge window of opportunities that exist in the Sahel.”
