President Muhammadu Buhari penultimate Wednesday inaugurated the Presidential Committee on North East Initiative (PCNI), to develop the strategy and implementation framework for rebuilding the North East region. The committee with a three-year lifespan would draw funds from Federal, State and Local Government appropriation, as well as the private sector and international development partners.
The Committee was set up late last year under the headship of Lieutenant-General Theophilus Danjuma (rtd) as Federal Government’s short-term strategy to alleviate hardship, and a longterm plan to build the infrastructure that most closely affected the economic life of the most vulnerable citizens. “The devastation to human lives and livelihoods by the insurgency in the North East is severe, with more than an estimated 20,000 persons killed, an estimated 2.4 million persons displaced and billions of naira worth of personal and public assets destroyed”, President Buhari stated at the inauguration. The setting up of the Danjuma-led Committee was apparently in response to FG’s technical defeat of the violent Islamist Boko Haram sect that launched vicious attacks on the North East states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe, especially, since 2009. Not helped by the preponderance of porous borders in the three contiguous states, which encouraged the influx of illegal immigrants and insurgents into the axis almost on daily basis; among several other setbacks, Boko Haram insurgency had festered almost without control until the coming of the Buhari government last year. Indeed, about this time two years ago, reports said access to food in the zone was a luxury because farming activities, the main source of sustenance for the zone, dropped drastically to less than 20 percent, with over 90 percent farmers staying away from their farms because of grave insecurity. But respite is said to have come the way of the zone presently.
It is easier to destroy than to build. Creation or construction, let alone recreation or reconstruction, consumes time and get built to the brim over a longer period. Building flows from serious planning, huge resources, painful and sacrificial
commitment, as well as grace. It is patterned, and it follows a sequence. The same cannot be said of destruction and ruin. All that is required is a split second of madness.
Therefore, that the rebuilding of the North East, according to Danjuma about the time the committee was set up, would in the short term cost roughly N2 trillion - the equivalence of roughly two years’ federal budget until the coming of President Buhari – is no surprise. “Conservative
estimates put the cost of the short-term intervention of the reconstruction of the region at over two trillion naira… Rebuilding the Northeast is one of the biggest and most complex challenges that Nigeria is facing today… The task would involve massive reconstruction of physical infrastructure, much of which have been totally destroyed and, of course, the more challenging one, which is the rebuilding of peace and social cohesion”, Danjuma was quoted as saying in Abuja at the opening of a two-day security seminar organised by the Alumni Association of the National Defence College.
With the inauguration of the Danjuma-led Committee, however, our hope is that the time is truly auspicious enough for the commencement of the reconstruction work; and that the scary reports early in the year that security in most communities in the zone was still under choking threat, despite the fact that the Nigerian Armed Forces, in collaboration with the Multinational Joint Task Force, had driven the terrorist group away from Nigerian territory into what President Buhari once described as ‘a fall-back position’ have significantly abated.
We recall that the Senator representing Borno Central Senatorial Zone, Baba Kaka Garbai, for instance, stated last February that the terror group still maintained threatening presence in about 50 percent of Borno State, its foundational base. The lawmaker said the Nigerian government, through its military and police, was maintaining law and order mainly in Maiduguri metropolis, Bayo and Kwaya Kusar Local Government Areas. “Mobbar, Abadam and Kala Balge (LGAs) are 100 percent occupied by the insurgents. There are some LGAs that are partially occupied by the insurgents, especially as the LG secretariats have been liberated, but their hitherlands are still controlled by the insurgents”, Garbai said. Such reports should be crosschecked and the threats properly evacuated before any meaningful reconstruction exercise, short or long term, can effectively be carried out in the North East.
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