Marshall plan for North-east Nigeria?

Some analysts have strongly argued  that the manifest rebellion evident in the insurgent and violent activities of the Boko Haram sect is fuelled largely by poverty conditions in the North-east region of Nigeria. The North East, base of the murderous Islamist group Boko Haram, had 69.1 percent and 76.3 percent absolute and relative poverty levels, respectively, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Poverty Profile Report.

While Northern Nigeria’s poverty rate as a whole is above 70 percent – double that in the South. The North East has been particularly hit hard as the lack of economic opportunities in the region drives people into the arm of radical Islamism, leading to a vicious cycle of poverty and underdevelopment.The problem is now being complicated by the insidious targeting of education by the insurgents, an example of which is the Chibok kidnappings.

Nigeria’s Southern states have higher secondary school attendance rates than the Northern states. The North-eastern states (Bauchi, Taraba, Yobe and Borno) fare poorly, with school attendance rates of less than 10 percent, according to the most recent NBS data.

It is evident that a long-term plan must be marshalled out for the region to bring it up to par with the rest of Nigeria, and prevent it from being a drag on the entire country and from also being  a captive region for rebellion and insurgency.

This is perhaps why there are calls for a strategic recovery and rebuilding plan for the North-east after the model proposed by the United States for Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War. This historic European Recovery Plan  has gone down as the Marshall Plan, named after George Marshall, the then secretary of state in the United States of America. US was committed to this European recovery plan because of the overriding zeal then to prevent Europe from falling prey to Communism.

The Marshall Plan which was approved by President Harry Truman on April 3 1948, started with an initial grant of 5 billion US dollars and for the four years during which the Plan was executed, the US committed up to 13 billion US dollars towards providing economic assistance to European countries that joined the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation.

In the case of North-east Nigeria, it is the fear of losing this region to the murderous activities of a fundamentalist sect that should drive the federal, and state governments in the region. They have to work out a realistic economic and society renewal plan that will essentially transform lives and create meaningful livelihoods for a populace that appears to exist on the fringes, and excluded from mainstream decent existence.

We believe that the states in the north-east region should collaborate with the federal government towards creating such a plan for the development of the region and pooling funds for this purpose.

Some analysts have even argued that Nigeria should seriously consider scrapping the corrupt and unsustainable fuel subsidies, and use part of the proceeds to finance the North-East Marshall plan.The subsidies cost N1 trillion ($6.25bn) in 2013, and the Federal Government could potentially channel N2 trillion ($13bn) over a four-year period, to the North East, from its 50 percent share of any funds received as part of the removal of fuel subsidies.

Whatever the funding plan for North-east Marshall Plan, what is germane is that poverty in this region should not be allowed to pose a threat to continued peace, security and livelihoods of peoples or to threaten the unity and territorial integrity of Nigeria.

In the same vein, governments at all levels must  always create and implement programmes that fight poverty wherever it exists because it is a real threat to peaceful and decent existence of peoples, communities and polities.