The Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar III, has applauded the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and other donor agencies for complementing efforts towards bringing sanity to the governance.
Stating this yesterday at a two-day workshop on United Nations Joint SDG programme in Birnin Kebbi, Kebbi State, the royal father added that Sokoto State Government had done a lot on social protection.
The leader of the Muslim Ummah, who was represented by the District Head of Kilgori Yabo, Dr. Muhammad Kilgori, said the workshop came at the right time the people of Sokoto needed social protection, which will go a long way to reducing poverty in the society.
He commended Sokoto government for releasing funds for the programme, while urging the participants to have successful deliberations and ensure that the people benefited from the workshop.
In his remarks, the UNICEF Chief Field Officer, Sokoto, Mr. Mohameden Fall, commended the state government for the intervention, urging the participants to utilise the knowledge gathered from the workshop.
The workshop themed ‘Institutionalising Social Protection for Accelerated SDG Implementation in Nigeria’ is a United Nations initiative to accelerate results for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through social protection efforts, The Guardian gathered.
Fall added that the programme was jointly implemented by UNICEF, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), International Labour Organisation (ILO) and World Food Programme (WFP) to strengthen social protection at the federal level and implement a programme in Sokoto to serve as a blueprint for other states.
“[The programme] is to contribute to the expansion and articulation of the cash transfer and universal health insurance schemes in Sokoto for greater impact. It also aims to facilitate collaboration between the social protection programme implementation unit and stakeholders to support integrated and inclusive social protection services, especially for vulnerable groups such as women, children, youth, persons with disability and older persons,” he added.
The field officer said that among the objectives of the workshop was to enhance the understanding of stakeholders on the concept of social protection.
The objectives include also to undertake a quick assessment of social protection in Sokoto and review existing social protection programmes; to identify challenges and gaps among the key players of social protection implementation in the state; as well as identify the different types of risks and vulnerabilities poor Nigerians in the state face, using a lifecycle and gender lens, he added.
