The Federal Government has expressed its readiness to meet outstanding
financial commitments to the various international organisations and
bodies to which Nigeria belongs.
Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Prince Clem Ikanade
Agba, disclosed this at a meeting in Abuja with the Country
Representative of Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United
Nations in Nigeria, Mr Suffyan Koroma.
Prince Agba’s disclosure was a direct response to Mr Koroma’s request
that Nigeria should settle its outstanding membership dues to the FAO.
He directed the Department of International Cooperation in the Ministry,
which is responsible for coordinating the activities of international
donor agencies, to produce a spreadsheet of Nigeria’s commitments to
enable government find ways and means to meet them.
The minister took the opportunity to call for better coordination
between the Depratment of International Cooperation and the FAO together
with other international donour agencies.
Koroma had also briefed the minister on what he described as “the
seamless implementation of the policy on the European Union
Commission-funded Food and Nutrition Security Impact, Resilience
Sustainability and Transformation programme in Nigeria.”
In another development, the minister has solicited the support of the
Ford Foundation in funding the Nigeria Institute for Social and Economic
Research (NISER), Ibadan, in the critical area of capacity building for
research.
NISER is a parastatal under the Ministry of Budget and National
Planning.
He told a team from the Foundation led by the Regional Head for West
Africa, Mr Innocent Chukwuma, in Abuja, that Nigeria was open to
further support and collaboration in funding development in some
critical sectors.
He commended the Foundation for its more than six decades of unbroken
investments in Nigeria, and called for more funding support in the
education sector.
Agba said he was interested in the development of the right curriculum
that “targets mindset change in dismantling the culture of violence
against women, which is one of the focus areas of the Ford Foundation in
Nigeria.”