One issue that has remained in the public domain and which is not likely to fizzle out soon is the 219 secondary schoolgirls who were kidnapped from Chibok in Borno State in 2014. President Muhammadu Buhari has said his government is yet to obtain credible intelligence report on the missing schoolgirls and, this has elicited several reactions from the public. ANDREW OOTA takes a look at the mixed reactions and the efforts of the present administration to resettle displaced inhabitants of the North East.
President Muhammadu Buhari in an honest point of view stated that he was still expecting a credible intelligence report on the missing schoolgirls from Chibok in Borno State. This has elicited several reactions even as a departure from the promises of the previous government that it had located the missing girls and was closing in on their abductors.
To some people, the President’s response was honest and sincere; there are those that have questioned the capacity of the intelligence gathering agencies of the country at a time the nation is being faced with various degrees of challenges particularly insecurity; others are using the President’s position to cover some political mileage and there is also a section of the society that strongly believes that the best opportunity to rescue the missing girls was bungled by the past administration when the world powers moved in immediately to provide both intelligence and personnel but met a brickwall due to lack of political will and commitment on the part of the then Nigerian government under president Goodluck Jonathan.
It is important to recall that several expert’s opinion on cases similar to the unfortunate scenario of the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls by the Boko Haram extremists points to the fact that once there is a window of reasonable time in-between the time of abduction of such nature and the commencement of a rescue mission, the chances of possible successful mission are very slim.
It would be recalled that former president Jonathan had confessed during one of his Presidential media chats, that even as President and Commander In Chief, he did not believe the information presented to him by his intelligence personnel that the girls were actually taken away from a school in Chibok and that accounts for the lateness in the rescue mission; but the mission itself was not predicated on sincerity and commitment which led to withdrawal of support, intelligence, training and equipment that the world powers such as United States, Germany, China, United Kingdom and others had pledged.
The situation deteriorated to a point that the USA took a swipe on the Jonathan government as one that was not interested in the fight against the dreaded Boko Haram.
While it is pathetic and unacceptable that two years after, there is no credible intelligence report regarding the whereabouts of the missing girls as anchored by the Bring Back Our Girls convener, Dr Oby Ezekwesili, the President’s position was what a responsible government must always uphold, which is honesty, integrity and transparency about developments giving the realities of such situations; this, to many analysts, did not foreclose the search, what it only did was to present the true position while those charged with the responsibility of providing the credible intelligence information that the President needs to work with, will continue the search and this was abundantly made clear when President Buhari said, “I could recall that so many leaderships of Boko Haram existed.”
He continued, “But we insisted on establishing the bonafide leadership of the so-called Boko Haram leaderships before we can agree to negotiate with them on what terms will be of interest to us before we can take them to their schools. Secondly, we want to ensure that they are complete, 219 and they are safe and sound. But what we also found out talking to a lot of sources is that, no Chibok girl has been recovered, they must have dispersed them all over the place, and we wanted as far as humanly possible.
“Although some of their parents are desperate they would rather see their graves or the conditions some of them should be in. We are still keeping our options open, that if a credible leadership of Boko Haram can be established and they tell us where those girls are we are prepared to negotiate with them without any pre-condition.
“This we have made it absolutely clear, but where they are keeping the Chibok girls, they must not get away with the idea that we will not attempt to secure the rest of Nigeria,“ said President Buhari.
The missing Chibok schoolgirls were a price the country had to pay for inefficiency, incompetence and lack of political will on the part of the previous administration under president Goodluck Jonathan, the inability of the past administration to take decisive measures in containing the insurgency at its very tender stage despite advises from past leaders and security experts, snowballed into what became formidable and could take over parts of the Nigerian state and hoist flags.
It is important to note that the contents of the President Olusegun Obasanjo’s private-public letter to former President Jonathan where Chief Obasanjo stated that President Jonathan’s refusal to take decisive actions to halt the spread of Boko Haram and tackle it with commitment and patriotism, was for political reasons, particularly the 2015 general elections, are some of the revelations that should automatically qualify president Jonathan as candidate for crime against humanity by the International Court of Justice, given the number of lives that were lost to the activities of the insurgents in the country.
The seemingly deliberate refusal of the former president to activate his foreign policy and run a ring of neighbouring countries to rout the insurgents were some of the inefficiencies that led to the alarming rate of destruction and havoc that the Boko Haram wrecked on the country, particularly the North East region of Adamawa, Borno, Yobe, Gombe, Taraba and Bauchi states.
The most unfortunate developments were the wrong assumptions where the neighbouring countries saw the Boko Haram insurgents as a Nigerian problem while the former President viewed it as political and a problem of the northern states that were mostly in opposition at that time.
Suffice to say that the steps taken by the present administration when the President stated during his maiden Presidential media chat that, “I’m working with Niger, Chad and the Cameroon and I assure you that the question of Chibok girls is only on our minds for even humanitarian reasons, but there is no such intelligence reports of where those girls are physically and in what condition they are in, but what we believe in from our intelligence, is that they keep shifting them around so that they are not taken by surprise until the girls are freed, and they are not kept in one place,” was what the former President needed to do, particularly when the leader of Boko Haram had said in a well-circulated video that the girls were married out to his members and that they were not within the country.
The questions before President Buhari during the Presidential media chat as far as the issues of the missing Chibok schoolgirls was concerned, were just scratching the surface of the price that Nigerians collectively had to pay for ineptitude of the last administration and this can be located in the direction of the destruction of economic fortunes of the North East region where millions of innocent Nigerians, young and the old, were made refugees in their own country, where many in their millions were mindlessly slaughtered, maimed and in some cases, burnt to death.
This quantum of destructive collateral damage that Boko Haram insurgents meted out to Nigerians through bombing of places of worship, military and Police bases, institutions, motor parks, abduction of both school and other innocent Nigerians, destruction of means of livelihood of Nigerians and homes, which either forced many to their early graves, left many orphans and some refugees, unfortunately again, became a conduit for some Nigerians under the guise of arms procurement through the office of the former National Security Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki.
It would be recalled that aside from the controversy surrounding the arms deal where monies meant for procurement of weapons to defeat insurgents were believed to have been diverted into other things as revealed in the cause of prosecution of the former NSA, huge sums of cash were intercepted by the South-African government, which the present administration has not commenced investigating.
These and many more are responsible for the over two million people presently displaced as casualties of the activities of insurgents across the country and, it was on this ground that President Buhari stated that, “There are about two million internally displayed persons in different camps in the country, with most in Borno State, with over 70 per cent of those being women and children. Over 65 per cent of the children are orphaned, their parents have been killed, some of them don’t even know from where they are, this is how pathetic the situation is today.
“The Federal Government came in and met efforts where some Nigerians contributed money, the Dangotes, the Lt. General TY Danjuma and a number of people and about N25 billion was raised, there was a committee that would supervise how the monies could be utilized to rehabilitate the IDPs. You could recall that the week I was sworn in, I went to Chad, Niger, I was to go to Cameroun when I was asked by the G-7 to meet them in Germany within the week. I went and saw them and I was impressed with the goodwill they have for Nigeria on this issue, and my coming back, we sent our shopping list in terms of the infrastructure destroyed, burnt schools, burnt health centres, towns and so on, and they promised to help.
“Remember that the G-7 has sent teams on ground, they have given some hard and soft military wares and that we have directed them to meet with mostly the Borno State government officials who can take them to affected local governments where there were these problems. And what I deliberately did that so that we do not create the impression that we want cash, but what we recommend is for those countries that intend to help to send people to verify and quantify the damage done to infrastructure and volunteer what they will do, at least some coordination is created,“ Buhari disclosed.
It is worthy of mentioning that soon after expressing the need for coordination of funds for the rehabilitation of the devastated North East and reintegration of the millions of Nigerians presently internally displaced, the President named General Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma, who would supervise every presidential interventions and initiatives aimed to rehabilitate Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Nigeria.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo revealed this during the Northern Reawakening Forum organised to rebuild the 19 northern states affected by the insurgency. Osinbajo said there was need to streamline all interventions including the Presidential Initiative on IDPs for better impact.
The Vice President, who stated that about 10 northern states remained the poorest in the country, emphasised that the new administration is committed to repair the damage. He said the social safety nets, Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT), one meal daily for school children should be top priority among all the interventions, stressing that the North bears most consequence of poverty.
His words, “We have been working on interventions in the Northeast due to immediacy of the crisis in that axis but the problem of diseases and poverty were exacerbated by the Boko Haram insurgency, close detailed, analysis and plans on the North east has been done in collaboration with some development organisations.
“We have government interventions such as presidential initiative on the Northeast, victims support groups, among others. Now that all the federal government initiatives are under the chairmanship of General TY Danjuma, we hope that streamlining these efforts this way will help to control immediate deliveries of succour to many of the problems currently in the Northeast,” Osinbajo disclosed.
It is imperative to stress further that the disposition of the executive arm of government to rehabilitate the North East and streamline coordination of all interventions for proper and judicious application calls to mind the source of funding for the North East Commission, if eventually signed into law by the President after the harmonised version of the Bill would be passed by the two chambers of the National Assembly.
The Senate is proposing the equivalent of 15 per cent of the total monthly statutory allocation due to all the states in the North-East from the Federation Account as federal government contribution to the North-East Development Commission, when the agency fully comes on board anytime this year.
The upper legislative chamber is also asking for 3 per cent of the total annual budget of any Solid Minerals extraction mining company operating in the troubled North-East states including agricultural processing companies as a source of funding of the commission as well as 50 per cent of monies due to member states of the Commission from the Ecological Fund.
If the bill is passed and signed into law, the Commission will have such monies granted or lent to, or deposited with the commission by the federal government or a state government, any other body or institution, whether local or foreign.
While the Commission, which would have a legal backing to rehabilitate the North East region, is still in the making, but above all its sources of funding, the Danjuma Committee would effectively hold forth and, this underscores the level of damage caused in the region and the country at large, largely because of the ineptitude and lack of political will to do what is right.
The wait for a credible intelligence report on the whereabouts of the missing Chibok schoolgirls is quite unacceptable, but the overall havoc caused by the insurgents is even more devastating and the measures announced by the present government in the twin approach of fighting insurgents and at the same time its commitment to rehabilitating the region are quite encouraging.
-Leadership
