The National Senior Citizens Centre (NSCC) has started drafting of work plans for a-10 year strategic plan development to enhance the lives of senior citizens in all parts of the country.
Dr Emem Omokaro, the Director-General of the Centre disclosed this at a five-day National writing workshop on Monday in Abuja.
Omokaro said the journey started with an inception meeting when all the stakeholders came together, defined a roadmap and made inputs on planned activities, pledging to follow through and develop a 10-year strategy.
“So far, it has been fruitful, rising from the inception meeting and with plan of activities. We collected materials that will enable us to develop and set a contextual framework, which is also a process that we have carry through.
“Also, we were determined and we set deadline for the northern zonal consultation with stakeholders. It was a fruitful consultation with eight categories from the representatives of 19 states in the Northernn Zone plus the FCT.
“We went to Lagos and had 17 states represented. We also had the NSCC Private Sector Roundtable where we harvested so much ideas.The inputs have been harmonised.
“Now, we want to critically look at these inputs and all leading us to now proceed the drafting workshop. At the end we are going to have a document that is legitimate, national and everybody will hear their voices in it,” Omokaro said.
Dr Joy Ufere-Isikima, Technical Officer for Healthy, Age and CAH from WHO office in Abuja, said the organisation had been in the process, starting from the development of the multi-stakeholders ageing policies.
“For WHO, I always say that we have a mandate when it comes to ageing to ensure we improve healthy aging across the whole world by giving a voice to ensure they are participants and interventions that is for for them, reach them wherever they are and the religion they belong to.
“We have come a long way and we are winning. I am so excited to see that we are walking the talk and that multi stakeholders are involved. We are part of it and will.comtimie to be part of it.
“We are supporting this process. It is not about developing a beautiful document as usual, but to make sure we implement them to the last.
“Also, we will take stock of what is implemented, what we have done well and where we can go back to make it better,” Ufere-Isikima.
Similarly, Mr Saheed Mustapha, the Senior Policy and Advocacy Specialist, Save the Children International said the Technical Working Group (TWG) had already been inaugurated.
“The TWG is the committee that is supposed to drive the development of strategy. The strategy belongs to NSCC primarily, but belongs to Nigeria as a whole.
“That is the reason why we deliberately decided that we need to have an approach that is participatory and will ensure that all critical stakeholders are able to contribute to developing a robust strategy.
” Ageing is a cross cuttingg issue; no one organisation can adequately address the issues of ageing. There are different dimensions to the challenges that the senior ctizens face.
“There are issues around health, livelihood, income, security and all the different domains that we have been seeing since we started this conversation,” Mistapha said.
The News Agency of Nigeria ( NAN) reports that after the draft of the document, it would be validated by Civil Society Oganisations and expanded stakeholders, before passing it to the board of the centre and other processes.
It is believe that when implemented, the plan will go a long way to positively impact on all senior citizens across the 774 local government councils across the federation. (NAN)
