UAE to support Nigeria on humanitarian, poverty alleviation initiatives
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has expressed its readiness to support President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s renewed hope agenda by helping to fund initiatives that would help Nigeria eradicate poverty by the year 2030 and reduce the number of humanitarian crises.
The UAE Ambassador to Nigeria ,Salem Saeed Al- Shamsi, stated this when he hosted the Minister for Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr. Betta Edu in his office while she was in Abuja for a working visit.
The Ambassador, who identified Nigeria as his country, declared that because he is both the UAE’s and Nigeria’s representative, he is devoted to Nigeria.
In her response, the Minister said her visit to the Ambassador was a follow-up to the discussion with the UAE Government at the UNGA meeting.
She said Nigeria – UAE bilateral cooperation has made the two countries recognise their areas of common comparative advantages.
According to her, climate change is one of the factors responsible for the humanitarian and poverty crisis in Nigeria.
“With the floods, drying up of the Lake Chad basin and other natural disasters associated with climate change, many Nigerians have been displaced and have lost their source of livelihood, resulting in humanitarian crises and poverty,” Edu explained.
She assured the Ambassador that she would be in the team led by President Tinubu to attend the Cop 28, which will be the 28th United Nations Climate Change conference.
“Climate change is one of the factors responsible for humanitarian crises and multicity-dimensionality poverty in Nigeria. This is evident from temperature increase, rainfall variability, drought, desertification, rising sea levels, erosion, floods, thunderstorms, bushfires, landslides, land degradation, more frequent, extreme weather conditions, and loss of biodiversity as well as drying of the Lake Chad basin by climate change,” she added.
The Minister also noted that all these factors continue to negatively affect the population, adding that the President is committed to addressing them and the UAE should support the country.
