Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, on Tuesday called for stronger efforts towards blocking all sources of funding for terrorism and related activities threatening the development of nations.

Osinbajo made the called at the on-going Third International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The vice-president said that global terrorism constituted a potent threat to peace, stability and economic development of countries worldwide.

He, therefore, called for adequate funding, partnership and collaboration of the global community to combat terrorism, extremism and insurgence as well as ensure a safe, peaceful and inclusive society.

``We call on this conference to accord greater recognition to the challenges to sustainable development posed by rising global terrorism.

``The phenomenon of global terrorism constitutes potent threat to peace, stability and economic development of countries worldwide.

``The threat calls for adequate funding, partnership and collaboration of the global community to combat terrorism, extremism and insurgence as well as secure safe, peaceful and inclusive society.

``We must identify viable funding mechanism to address all aspects of human security and other commitments to challenge terrorism.

``We must also take parallel action to intensify efforts towards blocking all sources of funding terrorist activities,`` he said.

Speaking on Nigeria’s development efforts, Osinbajo said that the Federal Government had been implementing reform policies aimed at diversifying the economy and building the requisite capacity to support technology transfer and develop value chains in the agro-allied sector.

He said: ``We are also developing new frameworks for domestic mobilisation of resources while at the same time curbing corruption and plugging loopholes in the system that have, in the past, provided avenue for capital flight.

``We are also empowering women and young people to be actively engaged in various economic activities by broadening opportunities for them to access affordable capital and other types of support to start their businesses.

``The critical factor for greater success is partnerships, support and adequate funding from all sources.

``We must, therefore, fully harness regional and multilateral efforts towards promoting the inter-relationship from all sources of development finance and achieving the synergies between financing objectives across the three dimensions of sustainable development.``

Osinbajo reiterated the Federal Government’s support for the establishment of a framework towards financing global education.

``Our government strongly supports the establishment of a high level commission for financing global education announced last week by the Norwegian Prime Minister and the UN Secretary-General.

``We note that the financing commission would identify more effective ways for mobilising and deploying resources, whose scale is needed to achieve the ambitious new sustainable education programmes.

``We recommend that this initiative should lead to the establishment of the Global Fund for Education.

``We ardently believe that such a fund will help galvanise the needed political commitment, facilitate partnerships as well as ensure focus and organisation required for scaling up financial resources to fund educational development.

``It should replicate the successes registered by the global fund for fighting HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria,`` he said.

According to the vice-president, the fund, as envisaged, should support universal, free and quality primary education, especially in developing countries.

He expressed Nigeria’s readiness to join the international community in re-invigorating and strengthening development finance and all the follow-up processes. (NAN)

•Photo shows VP Osinbajo.

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