The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation has said it wll partner Ministry of Interior to tackle internal security, human trafficking, migration, others.
The Minister, Dr. Betta Betta Edu, also said she would end the misery of Nigerians caught up in poverty and humanitarian needs.
The collaboration between the ministries, according to Dr. Edu, was imperative due to President Bola Tinubu’s desire to address humanitarian crisis and lift Nigerians from the global poverty index in line with the Renewed Hope Agenda of his administration.
Speaking when she visited the Ministry of Interior, Dr. Edu identified internal security, human trafficking, and migration as some of the factors leading to insecurity, humanitarian crises and poverty.
Betta Edu, while commending the Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, for bringing his experience to bear in the ministry, said collaboration with her ministry will enable her to get the intelligence required to manage humanitarian responses.
The minister, in a statement by her Media Aide, Rasheed Zubair said;
“We are here for serious business, and for us to succeed, the President has said we must team up and there must be inter-sectoral and ministerial collaboration to achieve success.
“My new responsibilities focus on covering a greater population of vulnerable Nigerians, providing them with humanitarian services and alleviating their poverty in line with Tinubu‘s agenda.
“The President is committed to seeing that Nigerians smile again, and reduce the number of people living below the poverty line”.
She said,
“My coming here is to speak with you because your ministry is one of the ministries that will make my job easier.
“The President is committed to seeing that he reduces the number of persons who are exposed or prone to a humanitarian crisis, I am saying this because a lot of our work depends on how well you do your work in the Ministry of Interior.
“We need your support and we need it at all levels. The heads of security agencies at this meeting will help to work with our team to gather intelligence on how people are moving in and out of our country.
“There are issues of human trafficking, child labour, and sexual exploitation, among other things which lead to humanitarian crises, we cannot continue to allow this trend to go unattended, it’s not acceptable. We need your support. We need intelligence from you. We just got the approval for officers from NAPTIP to be present at the different ports.
“We need you to know the importance of our collaboration with you on the border. We have to find ways to step up our intelligence in Nigeria, we have too many illegal borders”.
On social intervention, the minister said the expansion of the social register would be extended to servicemen and widows of paramilitary organisations, whose husbands died in service, adding inmates of Nigeria Correctional Services will also be captured and benefit from skill acquisition programmes of her ministry.
