By Martin Paul
Abuja
The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) said it was making a comprehensive plan to reconstruct Northern Nigeria, the Bank’s President, Dr. Ahmad Mohamed Ali, has disclosed.
A statement issued by the Bank and made available to Blueprint, quoted Ali when he received a delegation of Northern Nigerian States Governors Forum (NGSGF) in Jeddah, the headquarters of IDB.
The delegation, led by Borno state governor, Kashim Shettima, included Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of Kano state, Nasir Ahmad El-Rufa’i of Kaduna state, Umar Tanko Al-Makura of Nassarawa state and Muhammad Badaru Abubakar of Jigawa state.
“We will work together to come up with a comprehensive and constructive plan to support northern Nigeria. We will start with education, particularly bilingual education, and other areas such as job creation”, “before you leave Jeddah, I would like to have a list of your priority areas, from education, power to agriculture and so on”, he added.
In his remarks, the leader of the delegation, Governor Shettima, stated that in Nigeria, “poverty wears a northern face”, therefore, the purpose of their visit to IDB was to explore credible avenues to enhance developmental activities.
Shettima told the president of IDB that the region was suffering from joblessness, low access to education and healthcare facilities, despite the abundant resources in the region. “It is a giant with a feet of clay” he added.
In his contributions, El-Rufa’i told the IDB president that the North-eastern region required urgent intervention in education, electricity supply and poverty reduction, as according to him, a major cause for the insurgency is poverty.
IDB’s Vice President (operations), Dr. Mansur Muhtar, told the delegation that IDB would do its best to look into various areas of intervention, particularly in the development of infrastructure which was key priority in the bank’s 10 year development strategy.
He, then, thanked the delegation for visiting IDB, and hopes that the visit will help in forging a stronger partnership that will help in mobilising resources for the development of the region.
