This requires a master plan as well as technology
Rehabilitating the infrastructure ravaged by Boko Haram’s depredations, as well as the attritions of climate change, lies at the core of the effort to rebuild the Northeast and restore the residents’ rhythm of life before the region was plunged into mayhem. Without it, the region will find it difficult to resume its march to development, despite its abundant resources and the determination of the governing authorities.
But if it is to have any lasting impact, the rehabilitation must extend to schools and institutions of learning in the region. For it is the schools that will provide the critical human resources and skills that will propel and sustain its growth and development. It is therefore reassuring that the Federal Government has earmarked N3 billion to get the schools up and running again. Parents eager to secure a better future for their children through access to education, as well as students whose schooling has been rudely interrupted, will be heartened by this development.
Officials administering the programme must be under no illusion, however, that throwing money at the problem is all that is required to solve it. Bold imagination is also required, the type that can carve out a new path instead of reflexively following the prevailing orthodoxy.
Meticulous planning is also required. Have the authorities developed a master plan that looks beyond the present and the immediate future? The overall effort must be grounded on such a plan.
Security remains an overarching issue. We recall with regret that wide gaps in security and intelligence aided Boko Haram in its fiendish abduction of some 260 female students from their hostel in Chibok and holding them captives in unspeakable conditions three years ago. More than 100 of the girls are still unaccounted for. Those who managed to escape or were released by their captors following negotiations will bear the pain and the trauma for the rest of their lives.
The rehabilitation effort must be informed by an acute sense of security that anticipates danger and repels it. Otherwise the environment will not be conducive to the learning and the social interactions that must be part of their education.
Borno State Governor Kashim Ibrahim is to be commended for building and equipping schools that are in conception and execution a vast improvement on what Boko Haram had destroyed. But he cannot muster the armed might and the technology to secure them against the nihilists in Boko Haram. Only the Federal Government can do that.
A judicious slice of the N3 billion earmarked by the Federal Government for rebuilding schools in the Northeast will have to be invested in surveillance and communications technology. Until the time when Boko Haram is no longer a murderous menace, there will have to be boots on the ground. But the task of monitoring the environment, detecting and reporting imminent danger will be performed for the most part by technology.
