The Nigerian Red Cross Society (NRCS) has emphasized that its 800,000 volunteers are insufficient to meet the vast humanitarian needs of millions of Nigerians, particularly the vulnerable populations.
Officials of the humanitarian organisation made this known on the sidelines of a two-days NRCS National Inception Workshop held in Keffi local government area of Nasarawa state on Tuesday.
Our reporter gathered that the workshop which was organised in collaboration with International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Society (IFRC) commenced on Monday, July 21, 2025 with the theme “Volunteerism in Action”.
The workshop which is a pilot one and will be replicated in other parts of the country had in attendance 50 NRCS participants from Lagos, Ekiti, Anambra, Benue, Sokoto, Taraba and Edo states.
Mr Benson Agbro, Director, Disaster Management of NRCS told newsmen that given the different humanitarian challenges facing the country, the organisation’s current volunteer population cannot sufficiently meet the needs of Nigerians.
He said the development informed the headquarters of NRCS to commence the National Inception Workshop project aimed at equipping participants with the needed skills to attract new volunteers to the NRCS so as to provide adequate aid and support to vulnerable Nigerians across the country.
He added that the workshop will not only train participants on capacity to recruit new volunteers but will also train the participants on how to retain, manage and motivate the new volunteers recruited.
“Our target in terms of recruiting new volunteers to meet the needs of Nigerians is as much as we can get. Even if the whole population in Nigeria becomes volunteers, it will be good because in some countries they do not just serve their country but also serve their neighbouring countries.
“In the West African Sub-region we can see a lot of disaster incidents. Nigeria should be able to post volunteers of the Nigerian Red Cross to serve neighbouring countries especially in cross border incidents,” he said.
Mr Sidney Osawaru, National Youth, Gender and Volunteer Adviser of the NRCS also agreed and explained that in effectively carrying out it’s mandate of responding to disasters, NRCS must have enough human resource to support victims of disasters which it currently does not have given the huge population of Nigeria.
“Here in Nigeria we have a lot of disasters which include flood, conflict and other man made disasters and people are really affected. Victims of these disasters need adequate support by volunteers.
“Hence Nigeria Red Cross Society has been doing this, we need more volunteers to be able to reach out to these affected persons wherever they are. We have discovered that the number of volunteers are not enough hence this training so as to improve our capacity in the national society,” he said.
He however blamed regular flights of NRCS volunteers to abroad for greener pastures for the shortage of the needed human resource to adequately cater for the humanitarian needs of the country.
“So we need to recruit more volunteers to replace those professional volunteers so that we will be able to support victims affected by any conflict or natural disasters within Nigeria.
“For now we do not have the funds to train participants from all the states for now. So this is just the pilot. We have mapped out trainings for other states not captured for this training. Our target for the recruitment drive is not less than 10000 new volunteers from each state,” he said.
Also speaking, Mr Uchechukwu Okoro, Director, National Society Development of the organization said the workshop will also position NRCS better to develop a framework for volunteer recruitment, engagement, retention, motivation and also sustainability of volunteers.
“At the end of the day we will develop an action plan that will help us deliver on this mandate,” he said.
Mr Joel Adeyi, Senior Officer, National Society Development, (IFRC) lauded the initiative and said that the prospects of recruiting more volunteers after the workshop prompted the IFRC to provide 100 percent support to NRCS to have discussions on how they can expand on their volunteer base.
Miss Nsikakabasi Edet, a participant and Deputy National Youth Chairperson of NRCS describe the workshop as an eye opener which has exposed participants on new ways of recruiting and maintaining new volunteers.
“The impact of this workshop is a great one for us as the youth wing of NRCS because when we go back to our different branches we are going to ensure that we know how to maintain, equip and give the new volunteers proper orientation,” she said.
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