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From Sola Ojo, Abuja
Local and national humanitarian organisations have raised concerns about plans to place greater control of humanitarian response in the hands of the government, warning that politicisation, conflicts of interest and a lack of trust, could undermine the delivery of aids to vulnerable communities.
The concerns were raised during a stakeholders’ engagement organised under the Local Space Project, with participants drawn from local and national nongovernmental organisations in the North West.
The engagement is part of efforts to expand Nigeria’s humanitarian localisation discourse beyond the North East to the North West and North Central, with Christian Aid stressing that local organisations must have a meaningful role in shaping the framework before its planned release in 2027.
Programme Officer, Christian Aid, Joseph Damian, said the engagement was aimed at ensuring that local actors were not sidelined in the ongoing reform of Nigeria’s humanitarian response system.
To him, Christian Aid reviewed the National Localisation Framework (NLF), as part of the project and discovered the need to ensure that the voices of local and national organisations were reflected in the government’s proposed humanitarian reforms.
Damian said that while the North East had developed considerable understanding of humanitarian interventions because of the presence of international NGOs, organisations in the North Central and North West were yet to enjoyed similar exposure.
“Local and national organisations are the first responders in humanitarian crises because they understand these communities and their needs better than the outsiders,” he said.
He warned that excluding such organisations from the reform process could turn humanitarian response into a government-driven exercise rather than a locally-led intervention supported by the government’s oversight.
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“The real impact will be felt by the communities themselves if local actors are excluded; on-the-ground support suffers because you cannot make decisions about us without us,” he added.
He further explained that the views gathered from the engagement would contribute to a position paper to be presented to the government, with the expectation that the recommendations from local organisations would be incorporated into the Nigerian Humanitarian Response Framework expected to be released in 2027.
Convener of the engagement, Ayodele Martins Arokoyo, however, raised more serious concerns over the prospect of the government taking the lead without adequate safeguards to protect the independent humanitarian actors.
He said local NGOs were being allowed to scrutinise the framework and identify provisions that could negatively affect their operations and the communities they serve.
To him, “The decision to hold the session without the government’s representatives was deliberate because it allows participants to speak freely about their concerns over the government’s involvement in humanitarian coordination.
“Concerns over trust, corruption and administrative capacity had continued to shape the debate around government ownership of humanitarian interventions.
“For example, we learned that some government officials had established proxy NGOs through relatives, thereby creating unfair competition and sidelining genuine humanitarian organisations,” Arokoyo raised concerns.
He further questioned why the 2016 localisation agenda had remained largely unimplemented, despite previous commitments to strengthen the role of local actors in humanitarian response.
He, however, warned that proposals for a centralised funding basket managed by the government could become problematic if the existing concerns over transparency, coordination and conflicts of interest were not addressed.
