PREPARATORY to the launch of the Federal Government’s economic recovery scheme for the insurgency-ravaged North East, the Presidency yesterday okayed the commencement of a rapid peace building assessment for the region.

The special assessment is coordinated by the World Bank, United Nations, European Union and other development partners. The assessment is expected to take about two to three months.

Country Director for Nigeria and Coordinating Director for the West African Regional Integration Programme (World Bank), Rachid Benmessaoud, made the disclosure at a meeting with the Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, in Abuja.

Benmessaoud announced the launching of the assessment programme and said it would be overseen by the office of the Vice President.

The World Bank used the opportunity of the visit to announce plans to assist Nigeria with efforts to diversify its revenue source. To this effect, he said his group had commenced series of engagements with the ministers of Agriculture and Solid Minerals to determine possible areas of intervention.

He also pledged to give science and technology utmost priority, considering its ability to stimulate economic growth.

He provided details of the rapid recovery and peace building assessment for the region.

He said: “The fourth pillar of that response that we have been asked to support is in the North East crisis and today at the State House, we have launched under the leadership of the VP the rapid recovering and assessment for the North East, which will be conducted by the European Union (EU), the World Bank the UN in order to provide inputs to the government’s own policy formulation of the development programme for the North East and this will address the problem of the political dimension, the security dimension taking into consideration the humanitarian dimension and the development dimension.

“So this is an exercise, which we hope to complete within the next two months and then we will mobilise the resources in order to protect the support to the North East in terms of livelihood support to the affected internally displaced people. So these are the four pillars in which we hope o provide support.”

He went on: “What we have done at this moment is the response to the government request to do a rapid recovery and peace building assessment, which looks at the IDP (internally displaced persons) situation in the states and host communities. This will include an assessment of the livelihood on the various sectors of the economy, both hardware and software.”

On efforts to assist Nigeria to diversify its economy, he noted: “We have started the conversion with the various cabinet members to assess the demands from the government of Nigeria in terms of support to the development challenges in the country.”