EU signs €50 million MOU with Nigeria

The European Union Thursday signed €50 million Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Nigeria to assist most vulnerable communities in northeast Nigeria.

EU Commissioner for International Development, Neven Mimica and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama signed the MOU in the presence of President Muhammadu Buhari who is in Japan to take part in the Seventh Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD7), holding in Yokohama.

The region has been in the throes of a decade-long fight against Boko Haram insurgency, and lately, Islamic State in West African Province.

The insurgency displaced millions of people with over 20, 000 people killed. 

The crisis contributed to the ranking of Nigeria as one of the five countries most impacted by terrorism in the 2018 Global Terrorism Index.

According to the report, Boko Haram and Fulani extremists’ accounted for the largest percentage of deaths. The Bachama extremist group was listed as the third most violent group.

However, the number of deaths attributed to terrorism in the country fell to 1,532 in 2017 from 1832 in 2016. The decline follows the 63 percent drop in deaths in Nigeria in the preceding year and a 34 percent drop in 2015.