By Folarin Emmanuel, Abuja
Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) says it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Presidential Committee on the North-East Initiative (PCNI) to strengthen the coordination of peace and reintegration efforts for survivors in North East Nigeria.
According to a statment sign by Idayat Hassan, Director CDD, the MoU was signed at a meeting held in Sheraton Hotel, Abuja.
The PCNI is mandated to serve as the primary national strategy, coordination and advisory body for all humanitarian interventions, transformational and developmental efforts in the North-East geo-political zone of Nigeria.
“Both state and non-state actors have been making lots of efforts towards ensuring peace building and rehabilitation, chiefly in response to the needs of the people, including the communities, victims, among others, in the conflict-ridden States of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe.
” However, there are gaps in terms of absence of effective and efficient linkages, coordination, monitoring and evaluation of these activities as to measure in small and in holistic terms the progress both state and non-state actors are making in resolving the conflict in the North East. This has remained a major challenge to peace building process in the zone.”CDD said
It noted that its partnership between PCNI will therefore lead to the development of a coordination framework/architecture.
“The framework is based on some guiding principles and core values that will drive coordination including building synergy, information exchange, enhance value chain evidence and collaboration based on leveraging on each other’s strength for productive outcome.
“It covers activities in the northeast ranging from countering radical and violent extremism, victim support, offender support, Peace and Justice Initiative and technical support. Within the context of this, PCNI is positioned to establish linkages across different actors (state and non-state actors) interventions, provide and serve as the coordinating body for all stakeholders and run holistic monitoring and evaluation that defines milestones and measures progress, challenges and way forward.”
