Rebuilding the North East: Leadership, vision and the road to recovery, by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
Post-conflict reconstruction is a huge political, social and economic endeavour; one that no one really wants, but one that is often necessary because humans have still not lost their primal instinct to destroy. Nigeria as a whole has needed one for a while, since we have been bleeding our own noses through leadership failures, civil unrests, and terrorism. And perhaps no part of Nigeria needs that more than the North East region.
Post-conflict reconstruction is a sensitive and delicate subject, and there are many examples of how not to go about it. Like US President Donald Trump’s proclamation over Gaza, his desire to occupy a people’s land and turn it into a river is one of the most bizarre things you will hear. The problem, though, is that it is likely to happen because the world will stand aside and watch this injustice done.
Donald Trump is known for his theatrics, and for a long time, I guess many people imagined he was going to be America’s problem because, after all, he is America’s president. But he is going to be the world’s problem, it seems, as he has returned this time with imperialist goals. He had spoken of merging the US and Canada. He has spoken of annexing Greenland, and now he is speaking of obliterating Gaza.
The question has always been: what do you do with a conflict zone after conflict? Trump’s madcap idea makes sense only to him, and even Israel’s PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, standing next to him, seemed surprised by how far Trump was going when he said that the American president “took it to a whole new level.”
Before Trump’s latest pronouncement, I have been reflecting on the future of Nigeria’s conflict zone in the North East. This reflection was largely drawn from the work we did there with some writers from the North East, who we asked to write about their region before and during Boko Haram, and to explore what future they see for the region after Boko Haram.
Some of those stories published in the book, ‘Ordinary Saviour’, have been running through my mind, and the stories that addressed what sort of future they see for the North East have been resonant. In these stories, not just the infrastructure of the region has been rebuilt, but the damage to the social infrastructure and the psyche of the people has also been addressed.
There is no doubt that, as a result of the Boko Haram crisis in the last 10 years, the region and Nigeria at large have suffered serious setbacks that have dragged the country back by decades. It is a shame. But it is also a reality that we must address. The other option is to fold our hands and watch the decay.
To address this, the thinking has to be right. The thinking must not just be preoccupied with surviving Boko Haram and hoping it ends somehow. The thinking has to be proactive in seeking an end to the crisis and, crucially, how to rebuild the region and its traumatised people.
Navigating post-conflict situations is crucial. If mismanaged, it could lead to greater tragedies, like the blatant mismanagement of the post-World War I phase that led directly to WWII. Successful post-conflict reconstructions have seen countries use those periods as springboards for greater growth, like in the cases of France, Germany and Japan post-WWII. These rebuilds have seen the names of the men who led the efforts etched in history, names like Charles de Gaulle and Winston Churchill, who are not only crisis leaders but also helped rebuild their broken countries.
The point here is that the first step to reconstruction and recovery is getting the right leadership. While one can argue that Nigeria has in many ways been a country in crisis—no wars since the civil war, but the low cumulative low-intensity crises we have been dealing with could be counted as one. Nigeria as a whole needs great leadership to recover, and the North East could be the prototype in providing new directions for growth and development.
As of today, no Nigerian from the North East occupies a higher office than Vice President Kashim Shettima. It is natural for the region to look to him for direction and guidance. The good thing is that he has been a crisis manager and, as governor of Borno State at the height of Boko Haram, his approach was not to be phased and to immediately rebuild schools that the group destroyed and those in former Boko Haram enclaves. It was a crucial effort to erase the group’s ideology and build a future with an educated population.
I suppose, as a man of letters, one who is passionate about leadership and reading, he understands that the focus should not be just on the reconstruction of schools, but on building the minds of the people.
It is only hoped that with his position now at the centre, he will provide that much-needed leadership and guidance for not only the region but the country as a whole.
His successor, Babagana Zulum, has followed up with an aggressive approach to crisis management. One has to admire his head-on approach to handling the humanitarian crisis in the state, his desire to contain the crisis, and to provide that presence and assurance that the people in the state need. It is sad that he has to be the man with his finger in the dyke, because he seems like someone whose energy, if wholly invested in rebuilding rather than both parrying and reconstruction, could have gone far in getting the state back on its feet again.
But having isolated figures battling the tide is not enough. It must take collective efforts. It must take leaders and thinkers working together in all the states in the region. It must take the efforts of leaders in the various states to transition the region.
I know men like former MP, Hon. Mohammed Umara Kumalia, are mulling the fates of the region post-Boko Haram. In conversations, he has been a key figure in trying to get leaders in the region to work towards these ideas and was instrumental in the creation of the North East Development Commission.
More hands are needed, and some of the smartest men and women from the region, like the eminent business tycoon Kyari Bukar, a consummate entrepreneur, banker and financier who was instrumental in bringing Visa Card to Nigeria, or Mele Kyari, the Head Honcho at NNPCL, or Kashim Musa Tumsah, a consummate diplomat, lawyer and winner of national merit awards in both Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea for crisis negotiations, need to bring their knowledge, expertise, competencies, and leadership on board to rescue the region.
We have allowed Boko Haram to write a significant chapter in the history of the region and Nigeria. We need synergy, creative thinking and strong leadership, not just in the region but in Nigeria as a whole, to dig ourselves out of that hole.
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