Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made (1) of allocating Official Development Assistance (ODA) to the Middle Belt in Nigeria, and (2) targeting any such ODA to those displaced by farmer-herder conflict.

The UK remains committed to supporting Nigeria's development. As the Foreign Secretary set out in his statement to Parliament, the impact of the global pandemic on the UK economy has forced us to take the tough, but necessary decision to temporarily reduce the Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget. We are now working through the implications of these changes for individual programmes in Nigeria and we will release further information once allocations have been approved by Ministers.

We continue to encourage the Nigerian Government to take urgent action to protect all those at risk of intercommunal violence to bring perpetrators to justice and to implement long-term solutions that address the root causes of such violence and meet the needs of all communities.