1.) HUMANITARIAN RESPONSE AND DISASTER MANAGEMENT
Humanitarian crises in Nigeria in the past few years have been increasingly alarming with very devastated consequences on the citizen and national growth. Wanton loss of lives and properties, destruction of livelihoods have heightened the humanitarian crises which are triggered by incessant violent conflicts and natural disasters such as flooding. The situation has birth series of Internally Displaced Person’s (IDP) Camps. Unfortunately, the triggers of these humanitarian crises have not been adequately addressed while living victims of these disasters have remained poor, vulnerable and even more exposed to other associated dangers.
CLHEI therefore hopes to use this workstream to respond to humanitarian and emergencies, work around disaster risk reduction and environment governance including peace building and conflict transformation. It is believed that when community resilience is built, and early warning systems strengthened with positive behavioral changes from the people around tolerance and engagement with their environment, there will be sustainable peace and drastic reduction in the over-populated IFDP-c with those currently inhabiting them properly rehabilitated and reintegrated into their communities.
2.) DEMOCRACY AND GOVERNANCE
Democratic governance in Nigeria since the return of civilian administration is still plagued with many challenges. These have manifested in both the system and institutions of democratic governance. In some views, poor democratic governance has facilitated emergence of ethnic militias as people seek to defend and protect themselves. The electoral processes have been marred with irregularities, thuggery and huge financing. Ethnic divergence and divisions have become more glaring in the democratic regimes with arms proliferation and corruption fueling large scale insecurity and attendant negative consequences. Government policies are slow or ineffective while delivery of basic social amenities is compromised. Challenges of self-autonomy, agitations for resource control, ethnic and religion have further divided the citizens as society has become polarized.
CLHEI therefore, aspire to engage government to be more open, transparent and accountable to the citizenry irrespective of tribe, ethnic, religion or political party affiliation, focus will also be on processes, execution and monitoring of budgets at all levels of government. Interventions will be made around the electoral process with observation and
monitoring of the sacred process that gives birth to political office holders. Government will be further engaged with a view to enhance the process and systems that proclaim people -oriented policies while same will be adequately monitored.
3.) HEALTH AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
The health sector in Nigeria is faced with arrays of challenges. While there are many factors that make people visit hospitals, accessing affordable services has been a serious problem. Beside this, most health facilities are ill-equipped and not affordable. These have increased many behavioral and attitudinal character of people as they either resort to self-medication or patronize quacks for health services.
In Nigeria, the issues around health patronage is both behavioral and systemic. Studies have shown the deep gap between health workers and community members in many rural areas thus reducing facilities accessibility which has also increased child mortality and morbidity as rural people often visit the Traditional Birth Attendants and local medicine stores where vendors played on their ignorance to serve them fake and expired drugs. There is also the issue of associated stigmatization around some diseases and superstitious beliefs concerning some ailment, hence, those who suffer these diseases and ailment, afraid to be castigated often die from most of these diseases and ailments that are medically curable.
On other hand, the health services have suffered a lot of incompetency due to lack of structures, amenities and modern-day technologies to support medi-care. There is also shortage of workforce in the sector as many medical professionals often decide to work privately leaving the government owned health facilities inadequately staff. Unfortunately, Nigerians have increasing need to access health facilities ranging from injuries sustained during violence, road accidents, domestic hazards, environmental disasters, etc. the need
to therefore focus on health sectors as it supports human development is very important.
CHLEI program in the next 5 years hopes to intervene around behavior and systems in the health sector with interventions to elicit positive behaviors among health seekers and making health facilities accessible while building stronger ties between health workers and health seekers. There will also be interventions to shape, orientate, and influence behaviors especially on harmful traditional practices and stigmatization. The second leg of the interventions hope to address the health system towards making government becoming more concern as health sector is prioritized in budgetary allocation and implementation so as to bring health facilities to a standard where it can deliver on its mandate effectively and efficiently.
