ECOWAS, EU OSPRE, and Others Begin Resilience, Human Assessment In Nigeria To Strengthen Security

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Office for Strategic Preparedness and Resilience (OSPRE) – National Centre for the Coordination of Early Warning and Response Mechanism Centre, Nigeria, have launched a country resilience and human security assessment programme in Nigeria.

Other project partners include the Fund for Peace, the European Union, and the German government, among others.

Speaking at a technical workshop in Abuja, OSPRE Director-General Chris Ngwodo revealed that the meeting was an inception dialogue, the first workshop for the country resilience and human security assessment in Nigeria.

Ngwodo also revealed that the study is being conducted throughout West Africa, with Nigeria being the first country to participate.

He stated, “It is intended to map human security, vulnerabilities, and resilience factors in our country.”

He went on to explain that the committee’s goal was to gain a better understanding of the complex issues that underpin Nigeria’s conflicts and instability.

He went on to say, “We want to identify resilience factors that can help us become better at combating those issues that cause conflict and strife, and above all, we want to be able to generate empirical data that can be used to inform government policy interventions.”

He stated that the exercise is a follow-up to an earlier one, ‘Human Security Vulnerability Assessment’, which was completed in 2018, and that the findings have been extremely beneficial in establishing Early Warning Systems throughout West Africa and Nigeria.

He stated that during the exercise, the team will visit both hotspots and places that have demonstrated resilience to conflict and strife.

Ngwodo stated during the visits that this is because: “We want to understand the resilience factors as well as the vulnerabilities.”

“We want to understand not only the causes of conflict, but also what makes certain places resilient in the face of conflict.