German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has pledged to inject 18 billion euros for Lake Chad Basin region area and 50 billion euros for the overall area in a bid to recharge the Lake Chad.
She gave the pledge at a joint press conference after a closed door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, where he sought the German government’s assistance in intelligence gathering and training to tackle militancy in the Niger Delta region .
Merkel said the Lake Chad region was of great priority to Germany and Nigeria is part and parcel of the region.
According to her “In terms of cooperation we said we will earmark 18 billion for lake chad region area and 50 billion for the overall areas.
“The Lake Chad region is in alarming situation, there are 11 million people displaced, some of them are starving there, only 10 per cent of the Lake Chad left which obviously erodes source of livelihood.
“The President has in his delegation the governor whose province is ravaged by Boko Haram, we are gratified to note that there have been progress in combating them”.
She decried that the situation is very complicated in Nigeria because of the fairly high oil prices, fairly high unemployment rate and also Niger Delta, rising crime and that also is obviously a great difficulty.
According to her, both leaders also talked about the migration partnership with the European Union as the EU want to negotiate migration with Nigeria.
She said while countries like Syria have migrants as result of war, Nigeria’s migration is as a result of economic crisis, hence her country’s interest in offering vocational and educational training to young people.
“My point in this is that we need to see to it that human traffickers are out of business, we have to strengthen legal migration to also create jobs in Nigeria, jobs possibilities for vocational training, possibilities in education. Also in the context of migration partnership, we will also talk about readmission agreement.
“Germany has hundred’s of people who will have to be returned to Nigeria and our first interest will be how to help the young people to get job or fine a job.”
She also commended President Buhari’s effort in fighting crime, terrorism in Nigeria adding that “You see first the successes of this policies and you also see great readiness of partners in ECOWAS and in the region to participate in this good fight and this good course.
“Today’s exchange made our relationship closer, there is great potential we still need to tape and particularly in this difficult time we want to stand by your side.
“Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and has great potential for economic progress and this current crisis due to low oil price has to be overcome so that your GDP can be boosted and not in decline as is the case right now”, she stated.
On German government’s effort to help Nigeria recover stolen funds, Merkel said, “Well, I do appreciate him and if he has any indication as to where those funds are we will obviously immediately follow up, anything the president indicates to us in this respect we will take up, we want to fight corruption with him.
“Our foreign minister for example, has been instrumental in establishing international exchange, our finance minister has worked on thus as well so in the future, it will be very difficult to get money out of the country to hide them. We will work together with you on this”, she said.
