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Maiduguri, Feb. 16, 2017(NAN) Humanitarian bodies under the UN on Thursday pledged to drum up support toward mobilising the 1.1 billion dollars needed to rebuild the North East devastated by Boko Haram, in Oslo’s conference.
Mr Sean Hoy, the Irish Ambassador in Nigeria disclosed this while addressing newsmen in Maiduguri.
The Humanitarian Conference in Oslo, Norway is expected to hold next week.
Hoy said that the objective was to raise the needed fund for the implementation of a recovery programme in the area which had witnessed years of devastation due to the Boko Haram terrorism.
“We will commit ourselves in Oslo to fully support the process of moving from humanitarian crisis to normalisation until recovery,” he said.
Hoy was at news conference with representatives of 13 donor agencies among other stakeholders.
He lamented however that the situation in the North East was difficult.
“This is a difficult situation because we are trying to move to normalisation without a seize fire.
“This is not the end of a natural disaster, when we can bring back electricity and water supply and expect things to get better.
“We just believe that with normalisation and the military and civil authority in place, chances are that the huge crisis that affected the area will not happen again.
“This is because that opportunity will be stopped by having better security,” he said.
Hoy expressed dismay over the poor reportage of the humanitarian crisis in the North east by international media.
“The story about the humanitarian crisis here is not getting to the world as most people identified the crisis with the hash tag of Bring Back Our Girls.
“The danger is that if all Chibok girls are released tomorrow, the world will think that the humanitarian crisis is over.
“We have been trying to get the story out of Nigeria but it has not been as successful as we would have wanted it to be,” he said. (NAN)
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Edited by Grace Yussuf