The urgent task before North-East governors

The three north-eastern states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe have been the most affected by the Boko Haram insurgency that has ravaged Nigeria in the last couple of years. The terrorist activities of the insurgents have led to displacement of not less than a million persons, according to a January 2015 press statement by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which further states that “unless the insurgency is stopped, the tragedy could leave many more displaced inside the country and spill over to destabilise Cameroon, Niger and Chad”.

To buttress this point, the result of a survey conducted by NOI Polls in partnership with Social Welfare Network Initiative and Africare, which was released in February, shows that terrorist attacks accounted for 75 percent of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the country, followed by “flood (18 percent), communal/ethnic conflicts (17 percent) and religious conflicts’ (11 percent), among others”.

Beyond displacement of persons, the insurgency also fundamentally disrupted economic activities in the most-affected states, with ripple effects in the entire country. To be specific, the displaced persons were mostly farmers, and displacement meant abandonment of their farmlands (farming is the major economic activity of the region), most of which were, in any case, destroyed by constant stampede occasioned by real and false alarms.

Furthermore, export trade from Adamawa, Yobe and Borno to Cameroon, Niger, Chad and other African countries was disrupted, investors pulled out, no new investments were made, while companies that had sales representatives in the region withdrew them. At the same time, banks closed down their branches in the area. Schools were destroyed, as well as residential homes, churches, mosques and other public buildings worth billions of naira.

Also very devastating was the destruction of telecommunications masts belonging to MTN, Glo, Airtel and Etisalat by the insurgents in several local government areas in the three most-affected states, rendering rural communities in the area incommunicado. At a media briefing in Lagos last year, Osondu Nwokoro, director, regulatory affairs, Airtel Nigeria, told journalists that “53 of our telecoms sites were directly affected by the bomb attacks in the north-eastern part of Nigeria. But 193 sites were impacted in all, as huge outages were sustained”.

The ugly scenario painted above has not changed significantly, in spite of the recent successes of the Nigerian military in the fight against insurgency. What this implies is that returning or newly-elected governors in the insurgency-ridden North-East, if they are worth their certificates of return, cannot afford to go to sleep or glory in the euphoria of electoral victory. The task before them is not an enviable one, to put it mildly. This is even more daunting at this time of dwindling federal allocations. The governors must understand that it is no longer business as usual as they must seek alternative sources of revenue.

Besides the imperative of resettling displaced persons, the governors must immediately begin to revitalise and commercialise agriculture in the region through mechanisation. They must also closely focus on education to ensure that youths are well-equipped for the future and prevent them from being wiling tools in the hands of religious or political extremists. Good a thing the outgoing President Goodluck Jonathan was magnanimous enough to conceive the idea of, and erect, Almajiri schools in the region; the governors must build on this laid-down structure to get many of the out-of-school children in the region back to school.

Baba Shehu Bukar, director-general, Borno Chamber of Commerce and Industry, put it succinctly when he told BusinessDay that “the new governor [of Borno] needs to adopt a pragmatic approach to education and put more efforts in agriculture. Fertiliser has to be for all and now that things are improving and farmers are gradually returning to their bases, we expect the governor to mechanise agriculture”.

We also agree with Abdurahaman Modibbo Girei, president, Adamawa Chamber of Commerce and Industry, that “if the people are not settled; if they do not pay attention because they do not have homes, no leader can hope to achieve anything. In fact, without re-settling people, I foresee more problems. I wish he [the new Adamawa governor] would team up with the new president after the swearing-in ceremony to move the state forward.”

Adamawa, one of the largest states in Nigeria with a landmass of about 36,917 square kilometres, is known for trading and export of food crops such as groundnuts, maize, yam, cassava, guinea corn, millet and rice, much of which was destroyed by the Boko Haram insurgency.

We therefore call on Jibrilla Bindow (Adamawa), Kashim Shettima (Borno), Ibrahim Gaidam (Yobe), and other incoming governors of the North-East to wake up to these responsibilities and save the North from ravaging poverty.