With restoration as the target, President Muhammadu Buhari has taken the first step in rebuilding Nigeria’s North-East region by establishing a rehabilitation committee led by Theophilus Danjuma, an ex-Army chief. Boko Haram jihadists have terrorised the region since 2009, killing over 20,000 people and destroying the local economy. The Islamists have displaced two million residents, according to Buhari. In April 2014, the salafists abducted 276 girls from their school in Chibok, Borno State; 219 of the girls have yet to be rescued. In the face of the gripping ruins, Buhari’s intention is a welcome relief.
The committee, to be inaugurated soon, has its work cut out: The devastation caused by the Boko Haram offensive is mindboggling. The President said, “In the North-East, what I saw for myself and on those clips is a source of concern for people with conscience. They are mostly women and children who are orphaned. Some of them don’t even know where they come from. This is the pathetic situation the country has found itself.” This is no exaggeration. A new report by the United Nations Humanitarian Coordination Agency says that Boko Haram has so far abducted between 2,000 and 7,000 girls and women, whom it has forced into sex slavery. Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, the three hardest-hit states, and, to a lesser degree, Gombe, Bauchi and Taraba, are reeling under the brutal insurgency. In Borno, the jihadists have bombed 520 schools, and killed 350 teachers, according to figures from the state government. The UN says that the Islamists destroyed 1,100 schools in Nigeria, Chad, Niger Republic and Cameroon in 2015. The personal and collective toll can break the hardest of souls.
Between 2014 and 2015, Boko Haram occupied, and hoisted its flag in about 18 local government areas in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states, and launched attacks against the Nigerian state from the Sambisa forest, its operational headquarters. Although the Nigerian military has liberated the Boko Haram-held territories, Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, for instance, has seen an influx of 1.6 million internally-displaced persons, with its population rising to 2.6 million. Managing this crisis is a huge challenge.
Buhari rightly launched the efforts to rehabilitate the North-East shortly after assuming power last May. He presented a list of the damaged infrastructure to the Group of Seven most industrialised nations in the world at their June 2015 meeting in Bavaria, Germany, which promised to assist the country. On the home front, Nigerians could be asked to donate to the cause. This method has worked elsewhere. Through the personal donation strategy, two British newspapers –The Guardian and Observer – have just raised £2.5 million among their readers to provide aid for refugees around the world. The money has been handed over to six charities. Willing Nigerians should be asked to donate to the cause, while companies should be persuaded to contribute handsomely to the project. Although the World Bank, in July 2015, approved a loan of $2.1 billion for Nigeria to rebuild the region, much more funds would be needed for the project. It requires human compassion, commitment, funds and prudence. The Federal Government’s Victim Support Fund, an initiative of the last administration, budgeted N233 billion, according to Danjuma, who coordinated it.
But charity should begin at home. Northern leaders have so miserably failed to create happiness and economic opportunities for their people. Religious tolerance and mass education that will open up the area to economic growth are still tragically distant prospects. Changing the outlook may not happen overnight, but there must be a start. The Northern governors should play a key role by acting as agents of change. Bauchi State Governor, Muhammad Abubakar, is wrong to insist that “it is the responsibility of the state to continue to render its social and religious obligations to both Christians and Muslims in the state” through the sponsorship of pilgrimages. The governors should set their priorities right. States can achieve much in education, health and potable water with their resources by ending the sponsorship of pilgrims to perform religious obligations. Niger State, for instance, said it spent about N5.1 billion between 2007 and 2013 to subsidise both Muslim and Christian pilgrims. Rather than continue with the outrageously unproductive programme, Northern governors should toe the line of the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai, who has stopped the use of public funds for pilgrimages. Religion should be pushed back to where it belongs: private life.
The victims of the Boko Haram insurrection must have a chance to rebuild their lives and live again. The children are the future: they must be provided with the human, material and financial resources to grow into a life of hope. Principally, the rehabilitation committee should sensitise the global community to the humanitarian tragedy in the North-East through novel ways. As an example, after the earthquake that killed 8,964, injured 21,952 people and rendered 1.7 million homeless in Nepal in April 2015, the global community rallied round the beleaguered Asian country.
It is vital that the programme should be people-centred and not about “white elephants.” The electricity and telecommunications infrastructure that has been damaged would need to be repaired. Part of the fund should be ploughed into small-scale business ventures, rebuilding small-holding farms and rural infrastructure. Water, health services and other means of livelihood are the critical needs of man. Education is crucial: it will give the society the opportunity to de-radicalise the youth, and wean them off religious extremism, the blood-stained variety which Boko Haram is vending to impressionable minds.
