The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, has reiterated the commitment of the FCT Administration to the review and update of the Abuja Master Plan.
Mr Wike stated this when a team from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) visited him in Abuja on Tuesday.
He said the project, under the Abuja Integrated Urban Development Review and Update Master Plan, will be implemented in partnership with JICA.
“We can be assured that this is a project we are committed to and we will do everything possible to make it a reality,” he said.
The Minister promised the JICA team that all FCTA expectations for the implementation of the project would be met in due time.
He also assured JICA of stronger collaboration for the development of the FCT, including the satellite towns and their environs.
Also speaking, Shehu Ahmad, Executive Secretary of the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA), said the review of the 45-year-old Abuja Master Plan was crucial to addressing the current challenges of the capital city.
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“We are talking about supporting facilities in terms of infrastructure, water supply, power supply and stormwater and wastewater drainage system.
“We are also looking at the need for a smart city for Abuja to make the city one of the leading cities in the world.
“Urban mobility remains a challenge and we believe that these areas should be analyzed in order to improve it,” he said.
Mr Ahmad said the population explosion in Abuja had also created the need to look into creating employment opportunities.
He said the JICA team, with the support of a technical team from critical departments of FCTA and FCDA, have started collecting basic data for the formulation of the inception report of the project.
According to him, once the initial report is approved, an international conference will be convened to gather input from key stakeholders.
Earlier, Matsunaga Kazuyoshi, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan to Nigeria, said that open defecation, nutrition and urban development projects were some of the numerous projects JICA was implementing in FCT.
Mr. Kazuyoshi said in particular that capacity building projects for improving nutrition in developing countries and eliminating open defecation had recorded enormous success.
He requested greater collaboration with the FCTA to deepen the results-oriented project to impact more communities in the FCT.
Speaking on the review and update of the Abuja Master Plan, Nobukuyi Kobe of JICA’s Infrastructure Management Department said the aim was to ensure sustainability in line with relevant government policies.
Mr. Kobe said that the project's output 1 was the formulation of a regional infrastructure development strategy for the Federal Capital City and satellite cities and an integrated urban development plan from 2025 to 2050.
He added that Outcome 2 was to improve the capacity of planning and implementation officers of the revised plan.
However, he said the FCTA is expected to help streamline correspondence with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He said the FCTA is also expected to approve the revised and updated plan, along with the Urban and Regional Planning Act, as well as smooth collaboration between the FCTA and the FCDA.
Nutritional intervention will get more funding
Mr. Wike also promised to increase funding allocation for nutritional intervention in the 2025 budget of the FCT Administration.
The Minister particularly commended the agency’s Capacity Development for Nutrition Enhancement Project (CADNIP) on FCT and open defecation projects, which he described as a great success.
He said that to sustain the successes, the FCTA would improve the budget allocation for nutrition intervention in 2025, but with a caveat on transparency and accountability in the use of funds.
He noted that improving nutrition was key to achieving goals in health, education and agriculture, among other sectors.
“Therefore, if we could add more funds, it would go a long way to improving the level of service delivery in key sectors,” he said.
Mr. Wike further requested the continuation of JICA's intervention in education, particularly to improve the teaching of mathematics and other scientific subjects in public schools in the FCT.
Ubokutom Nyah, the Mandate Secretary, Economic Planning, Revenue Generation and Public-Private Partnership, disclosed Mr. Wike’s approval for the establishment of a Nutrition Department in the secretariat and a Nutrition Unit across the secretariat and agencies of the FCTA.
Mr. Nyah noted that the FCTA has been struggling to establish the nutrition department to serve as a focal point for the operation of nutrition programmes and projects.
“This was the obstacle that hindered the success and implementation of the nutrition project at the FCTA.
“This is part of the requirements for the smooth implementation of the JICA nutrition project and other nutritional interventions,” he said.
Furthermore, Udo Atang, Head of Civil Service of the FCT, said approval for the establishment of the nutrition department has been sent to the Common Services.
Mr Atang explained that the move was intended to ensure that the department was properly reflected in the FCTA's organisational structure.
He said recommendations for the appointment of the Head of the Nutrition Department and other deployments would be forwarded to the Minister for approval.
According to him, multi-sectoral approval would improve the structure and optimize the coordination and implementation of the nutrition programme in the FCTA.
CADNIP project chief advisor Sonoyama Hideki said the project, which was previously designed to run from March 2019 to February 2024, has been extended to October 2024.
Mr Hideki said the project targeted 11,000 pregnant women, children under two years old and mothers.
He said the aim of the project was to develop an effective approach to improving food-based nutrition in rural areas.
He added that the project was also designed to strengthen the multi-sectoral structure of the FCTA to adopt such an approach.
The project's lead adviser said that by the end of the five-year project, minimum dietary diversity for children aged six to 23 months had increased from 31.8 percent to 49.8 percent.
He added that the minimum meal frequency for the same age group increased from 81.5 percent to 86.9 percent, while the minimum dietary diversity for mothers and pregnant women increased from 41.3 percent to 54.1 percent.
(YAYA)