Against the backdrop of the of the humanitarian crisis in the North East, the deputy Senate President, Senator Ikechukwu Ekweremadu says Nigeria was unable to build internal capacity and mechanisms for managing humanitarian situations.
Ekweremadu, highlighted the nation’s inability to learn from the Biafran civil war is the major reason for the worsening humanitarian crises going on in the North-East, Vanguard reports.
According to him, this inability to learn from past historical antecedents was the sole reason that the country was unable to build internal capacity and mechanisms for managing humanitarian situations.
Ekweremadu consequently affirmed the National Assembly’s commitment to bringing relief to parts of the country facing humanitarian challenges, notably Eastern Nigeria
The senator said this while receiving a delegation from the Princess Modupe Ozolua-led Empower 54, which paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja.
Ekweremadu insisted that the country had gone through humanitarian crises scenario going on and ought to have taken a good degree of knowledge away from it.
“As a young boy in the 1960s, I experienced firsthand the humanitarian crisis in the eastern part of Nigeria occasioned by the Biafran war. Then, we had to depend on international donors and humanitarian organisations.
“Unfortunately, from the developments so far in the North East, it is clear that, like virtually every other thing in our history, we did not learn from that experience. We remain heavily dependent on humanitarian organisations and donors.
“If we had learnt from the experience of the civil war, Nigeria would have needed little or no external support. We would have built our internal capacity and mechanisms to manage the North East situation”. Ekweremadu, however, commended the Empower 54 for its humanitarian outreach, particularly its efforts to have some of its supplies manufactured in Nigeria,” he said.