The new Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Dr. Nentawe Yilwatda, assumed office on Monday with a commitment to address the image problem in the ministry in order to restore the confidence of staff and members of the general public nationwide.
Addressing an excited staff, who ushered him into the office, Yilwatda said he would do his best to integrate the ministry’s activities to ensure that the staff and management work in tandem with the Renewed Hope Agenda and policy thrust of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration in order to ensure service delivery, growth and development.
“I’m here to find a family that we can sit down together and work on the modality of addressing the issues that are facing us as a country. We have challenges that we as a nation must recognise, identify, come together as a people, and address for the sake of ourselves and our future. And that’s the reason why I’m here together with the Minister of State, the Permanent Secretary, and all of the heads of the agencies,” he said.
On the image of the ministry, he said, “…believe you me I know also, like somebody rightly said here, that we have an image issue that we need to address. We have a trust deficit between the ministry and the general public and the national community; and we must clean those image issues.
“We must address the issue of the trust deficit so that we close the gap between us and the international community and the public. And in doing that, we need to also ensure that we bring in transparency.
“And part of the measures of transparency is to ensure that we get most of our processes automated. So, we will ensure that what we do can be visible. And that will encourage people to invest in our activities and provide some partnership for us as a people.”
Minister of State for the ministry, Dr. Tanko Sununu, in his comment also emphasised the imperative of redeeming the image of the ministry so that the impact of its activities would not be underrated by the general public.