By Ezra Ukanwa, Abuja

AS part of efforts to ensure safety of Nigerians, particularly those at mine-affected areas as a result of insurgency, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, has partnered with an international organization: Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining, GICHD.

The partnership suggests that a framework of cooperation would be drawn up to enhance capability building of the Nigerian demining program in line with the country’s national strategic priorities.

Speaking during a visit to the Ministry, by a delegation of GICHD, the Chief, Mine Action Programmes, Valon Kumnova, said that the purpose of the visit was to look into some of the problems currently faced by Nigeria, and mapping out modalities of eradicating those challenges as it relates to explosive ordinances.

According to him, “our organization is based in Geneva. It’s an International Centre for humanitarian demining and it primarily operates in supporting governments that are affected or governments of the states that are affected or landmines, explosive ordnance IDs and so on and so forth. Our work tends to be upstream in terms of the support that we provide, and generally speaking, the support could be multifaceted from support to development of correct strategies.

“We also support countries with various kinds of training on operational efficiency and safety to make sure that the work is conducted as efficiently as possible but as safely as possible. Although those two terms sometimes can be at odds because if you do the work quickly, it’s intuitive or counterintuitive to think that it can be done safely, but there is a way to do it.

“We have pioneered a system called information management system for mine action, which pretty much every affected state that is contaminated either with landmines or improvised explosive devices uses to actually collect and disseminate information.

“Nigeria is a priority country for our newly launched strategy which runs for the next four years. It is the first time we’re engaging with the country. I’ll be looking for the next two or three days to learn as much as possible, both in terms of the needs, how quickly we might need to sort of mobilize the support. As far as we’re concerned, we can actually start relatively soon but it’s important to start on the right foot with the commitments of course that we have from the Nigerian government.”

Meanwhile, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, said that the partnership was timely and would greatly assist the government in ensuring safety for its citizens.

The Minister who was represented by the Permanent Secretary, Dr. Nasir Sani Gwazo, pointed out that demining is different from that of the Military, adding that the Ministry would take all necessary steps to ensure the safe return of refugees or Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, to their homes.

He expressed displeasure over the fact that Nigeria is still experiencing the effects of explosives ordinances, particularly in the north eastern part of the country due to the activities of Boko Haram and other insurgents.

He noted that the foregoing brought to light President Buhari’s mandate to the Ministry, to as a matter of urgency, establish an inter-ministerial multi-agency civilian led committee to oversee coordination, control and priority-setting of mine action in Nigeria.

“At this ministry we align with the global best practice which sees Humanitarian demining as the physical removal or deactivation of abandoned mines, explosive remnants of war (ERW), and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to protect civilians from their indiscriminate effect, facilitate a return to ordinary civilian life and, where applicable, ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid.

“Our approach to mine action also factors the fact that Humanitarian demining differs from military demining because it aims for complete mine clearance to make an area safe for civilians and which must have a distinctly humanitarian, non- military purpose. The objective of humanitarian demining is to create conditions for the safe return of refugees or IDPs to their homes and farms and to restore infrastructure critical to a nation’s capacity for economic recovery and political stability. Military demining, by contrast, has very different priorities from those imposed by post-conflict reconstruction imperatives.

“In Nigeria we have experienced, and are still experiencing the effects of all kinds of explosive ordinances to the local populations in the north east as a result of the Boko Haram insurgency. In subsistence economies like we have in Nigeria, civilians collect items of ordnance for their value as scrap metal or for the explosives they contain, women go in search of firewood and farmers try to return to long abandoned farmlands while children may be killed or injured while playing with UXO they encounter in their daily lives.

“The consequences of not having a national programme responsible for humanitarian mine action have all too often been fatal.”

He maintained that the Ministry, in partnership with the Geneva delegation would work robustly in ensuring reduction of risk to communities caused by explosive ordinance.