What we refer to today as the Nigerian Red Cross Society actually began as the British Red Cross.
In 1960, The Nigerian Parliament passed the Nigerian Red Cross Bill into law and before you could say, ‘‘Red o!’, the Nigerian Red Cross Society was born! The Nigerian Red Cross Society is Nigeria’s largest humanitarian organization with a volunteer strength of 800,000 spread across the 774 Local Government Areas of Nigeria.
The Nigerian Red Cross Act of 1960, CAP 324 states in Section 5 (1) that ‘the Society shall be recognized by the Government of the Federation as a Voluntary Aid Society, auxiliary to the public authorities’. This implies that we are a creation of the Federal Government of Nigeria, and are legally required to support public authorities in the area of humanitarian interventions. The Act of Parliament and the Geneva Conventions, to which Nigeria is a party, form our mandate.
