- United Nations report says Boko Haram scare still slows down humanitarian work
The United Nations is not a body that makes fuss, especially when it regards security of lives and properties. So, when the world organisation announced recently that Boko Haram, the terror band of northern Nigeria, was frustrating its work in that part of the country, it should compel our attention.
This is contained in a report released by the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The report does not advert specifically to the names of the local government, but it says it has difficulty carrying out humanitarian missions to the south, southwest and east of the state.
According to the report, “most roads to the south, southwest and east remain unusable due to security concerns and most humanitarian personnel movement is done through air assets.” The report continues that “cargo, however, is being transported via road with armed escorts as a last resort.”
What concerns the United Nations is its ability to perform its task of bringing to normalcy the lives of many who have been denuded of their basic supplies to live from day to day.
The report says further that, “insecurity, presence of mines, improvised explosive devices and unexploded ordinances had continued to slow down the response of humanitarian agencies in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states.”
It is not clear from the forgoing if the United Nations was painting broad strokes about the northeast rather than Borno itself. So, maybe the UN meant three states and not three local government areas.
The report said, “no humanitarian aid is currently reaching locations on these locations in these LGAs outside of the LGAs’ main towns called “headquarters.” The report was also titled, “North-East Nigeria: Humanitarian Situation Update.”
The report has a few cheering lines. For instance, it says “major humanitarian supply routes towards the west, north-west and north are open for humanitarians without the use of armed escorts. Following advocacy efforts, Konduga and Mafa are now also accessible to aid groups without military escorts.”
Whatever the situation is, the heart of the UN report is in the right place. It shows that they would like to do more for Nigerians in the region, but the propitious environment must predate such enthusiasm.
Since the Buhari administration kicked into action in the northeast, we have witnessed a profound retreat of the Boko Haram group. We have cheered as a nation to a new berth of relative tranquility as against the old savage swagger and slaughter that reigned in the years of the former president, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.
We acknowledge, and the military should as well, that the story is far from over. We continue to see the sporadic attacks from ragtag bands and suicide bombs from beguiled youths. These may sound like irritation but they are the proper definition of terror.
Places where people are packed together become what security experts call soft targets. Soft targets are a routine part of organised societies and civilisation. We are not only seeing this here in northern Nigeria, but everywhere else in the world, especially in the west. We have seen this in Britain, United States, France, Germany and a few other countries.
In northern Nigeria, including Borno State, markets, schools and places of worship have become spots of vulnerability.
What this calls for is to step up intelligence services to anticipate these acts of terror. With the significant retreats of the terror group, the onus is now to rebuild infrastructure, health services and schools. The root cause of the problem is educational backwardness. To attack it, we must not allow the forays, however intermittent, from the Boko Haram to slow down efforts to bring life to normal in the Northeast.
