Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State was in Niger Republic on a two-day working visit last week. He met with over 200,000 indigenes, who fled Abadam, Mobbar, Kukawa and Monguno local government areas in the wake of attacks by the Boko Haram sect, before military assistance came from the joint Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger Republic military forces. The governor spoke with reporters in Diffa, headquarters of Diffa Region, shortly before he departed the West African country. Excerpts:
You have come here and seen the plight of your people who fled their homelands due to insurgency, what is your assessment?
All of us are highly traumatized by what is happening to our people, who are uprooted from their ancestral homes and made refugees in foreign land. I am personally touched, but the good side to all these is that there is silver lining in the horizon. The current effort by the Nigerian, Nigerien, the Chadian and Cameroonian troops has indicated that respite is on the way and very soon the insurgents would be overcome and our people would be coming back home soon.
Your Excellency, some of the refugees we interviewed here in Niger said they have spent up to seven months, some less. Why did it take you long to come?
This is not the first time a delegation from Borno State Government is visiting Niger Republic to meet refugees. We set up a high powered delegation comprising stakeholders in the affected local government areas and they have visited here three times. But, in my case, this is my first visit like you indicated and the reason is mainly due to security activities along the routes to Niger. My visit was delayed to avoid obstructing security operations along the routes because a governor’s movement is always different because of diplomatic and other factors. I came as soon as the coast became clear for me. We came for two main reasons; first to express our profound appreciation to the Government of Niger Republic and the Government of Diffa Region for their uncommon support for our people. They have done so much for our people. We are very grateful. Infact, they take all the credits for supporting our people and meeting their welfare needs, it will be wrong for us to claim we have been responsible for our people’s welfare in Niger. The Government of Niger did so much. We only offer support. Whatever we bring, we handover to the Nigerien authorities to manage our people. We came now with money, drugs especially to fight malaria and hundreds mosquito nets but we handed them to those who are the real people taking care of our people. With all of you, we have visited different camps and met our people. We have seen not just the officials from Niger, we also saw officials from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the WHO, doctors without borders and a host of others. We are grateful for their respective efforts and we will forever remember their support for us at our most difficult moments in history.
Definitely, Niger is not the only country where they have fled into. Do you have a plan to visit others countries where they have fled into and do you think you can ever convince all of them to return back home?
Obviously, there is a lot of clamour by the refugees to go back home for there is no place like home. I have the intention of visiting Cameroon for there we have refugees from Kala-Balge, Ngala, Gwoza, Marte and Dikwa local governments. We are going to go and sympathise with them and assure them of unflinching empathy and support. Believe me, once our communities are totally liberated and clear of possible land-mines buried by insurgents, once infrastructural facilities are repaired or fixed up, once the pockets of insurgents in the countryside are cleared up, a lot of them are willing to go back home. But, for now, there is a lot of apprehension because there are still some insurgents in some of the villages. There are over a thousand insurgents in some villages between the Abadam, Mobbar axis. They are still wreaking havoc in villages. But, very soon, we believe our military authorities will extend their reach beyond the local government headquarters to the nooks and crannies of the local governments to clear out the insurgents once and for all. But for now the job is more than half done, however if they are allowed to roam the countryside they will continue to wreak havoc. To be fair to the military there has been major developments especially in the context of the recapture of the major towns.
You were once a passionate advocate of dialogue between the government and the insurgents. At what point did you have to modify approach to this?
Well, unless we want to engage in an endless war of attrition, dialogue is an inescapable option. I have always been an advocate of dialogue and I will always remain one. As JFK Kennedy has rightly said, “let us never negotiate out of fear but let us never fear to negotiate.” So along that line I believe dialogue is the only way out. The most intractable of global problems are solved on the negotiating tables, the Irish question, the Israeli/Palestinian quagmire, most of the problems of this world, in Colombia, the rebels are talking to the government of Colombia. And in the Boko Haram sect, we have the moderate element, underline the word moderate element, those that were forcefully conscripted into the sect, those that are willing to lay down there arms, are we averse to embracing them? We just have to embrace them and give them re-orientation and introduce them back into the society. But the nihilist among them who are on murderous part will never dialogue with us, that is the truth of the matter. But along this line I believe the moderate element among the Boko Haram far supersede the extreme elements but because of fear the newly conscripted Boko Haram were being forced along not of their own volition. They are not ideologically Boko Haram, but forcefully conscripted young boys and sadly they are the ones they push to the battle front to die a very un-glorifying death.
How do you quantify the destruction the insurgent has done to Borno State, the Northeast and the nation?
It preposterous for one to start putting figures, but the destruction they have wrought have passed physical infrastructure. Our people are psychologically damaged. And most importantly what we can do now is how to rehabilitate our people in terms of psychology, in terms of physical infrastructure, in terms of mans of livelihood. Because a lot of our people are artisans, farmers, and the poorest of the earth; and Boko Haram has further pauperized them. So, we start taking stock on how to fix the system and assist our people. Let us just get all our land back.
Sir, do you think Borno State has what it takes for the rehabilitation and reconstruction, or perhaps it might be an heavy load for even the FG?
I believe there should be a global effort, a kind of Marshall Plan of action towards rehabilitating the infrastructural facilities, towards rehabilitating the lives of our people, making our educational system work again, towards enhancing and strengthening our health care. It is beyond the resources of the state and, to a large extent, beyond the resources of the Federal Government because there are other competing demands for the meagre resources. The price of crude oil has plummeted to less than $60 per barrel. There has to be a global effort towards the rehabilitation and reconstruction and to arrest the system. The way they mobilised millions of dollars in the rebuilding of Syria, Libya and other communities. We do not have much oil or either are we important in context of our territorial location, but we still need the support of the international community. For oil, we have in Lake Chad, but I do not think we are of strategic location to the global powers. It is in the enlightened self interest of the rest of humanity to come to our aid.
What are you doing to rehabilitate the victims?
We are spending hundreds of millions of naira every month on the welfare of our displaced people. Within Maiduguri metropolis alone, we have 17 refugees camps and a new one was just added to it and we now have 18 camps for internally displaced persons. In these camps, we have 276,000 refugees as at last count. This is beside over one million people that are hosted by the host communities; some are in rented apartment, some are in the houses of their close relations. Mind you, we extend hands of gesture even to those living in rented apartment and houses of their relations. Honestly, in a single meal we expend as much as a truck-load of rice, a truck-load of maize and we are slaughtering a cow in each of the refugees camp on a daily basis. I do not want to put figure, but, all we are concern about is the welfare of our people and no amount is too much for this. And this goes beyond politics because Borno belongs to all of us; it belongs to PDP, it belongs to APC, and all other parties, it does not really matter for it is for us to bring our people together and solve their problems.
About three years ago, when the destruction by Boko Haram was less than half of what it is today, you said it will take 50 years to recover. Now, how many years do you think it will take to need to recover?
What is happening is that, in terms of physical attributes, in terms of infrastructure, we can fix those things back in a year or two, but the damage to the psyche of our people will take decades to fix; because almost a whole generation has been wiped off, the generation of youths between the ages of 15 and 16 and 25 years, a chunk of them have been wiped away. If anybody tells you that 15,000 people lost their lives since Boko Haram insurgency, this is a cock and bull story. The 1,000 estate along Damaturu road in Maiduguri up to Maisandari ward, in a month, up to a thousand lives might have been lost. They are talking about the Syrian tragedy, believe me ours supersede it because probably between 300,000 and 500,000, might have been in this tragedy. Every single day, we are witnessing countless lost of human lives. In terms of infrastructure, in terms of building we can get over it very soon, Insha Allah with or without the intervention of the federal government, we will use whatever resources we have to see that we react to the needs of our people. But the damage to the psyche, the social structure, while a whole generation has been literally wiped out, then we gave a great task ahead of us.
There are agitations by PDP leaders and candidates that the March and April elections should only hold in liberated communities. What are you doing to ensure that?
Let me place it on record that I am absolutely in support of elections holding in local government areas. After all, I was elected with popular mandate in 2011 with elections taking place across more than two-thirds of the 27 local government areas of Borno State. One who has won elections and has kept fate with his people and is doing his best to meet his obligations has no reason to fear elections. The voters are the same, whether they vote in local government areas or anywhere else. However, I think it will be irresponsible on our part as a government to hurry our citizens back to liberated communities now mainly to go and vote because that will be very callous. We have pockets of insurgents in some villages. We have had attacks that are very recent on some routes, we all know that these liberated communities are still not fully safe and habitable. The military has recaptured lost territories but we have one ot two to go. Then, some insurgents fled to villages and they are still posing problems, how safe will our people be if we force them back today? How safe will it be to send people to Gamboru, Baga, Monguno, Malamfatori, Kala-Balge, Mafa and other places, what about the issue of landmines possibly planted there that everyone knows the military has been contending with? All those politicians that stay in Abuja and cause all manner of confusion for Borno, if they are so certain that liberated communities are now safe, let them go and live in Gamboru like the ordinary people. Why have they moved their entire families and their cats, out of Maiduguri that is relatively safe not to talk of the local government areas? Why do they want our citizens to go to liberated communities and put their lives at risk, knowing fully well that there is so much to be done. Apart from the issue of safety, there are decomposed bodies. We need to do so much fumigation and environmental cleansing. We need to rebuild homes destroyed, markets, schools, hospitals. Many have been destroyed. We need to fix things because our citizens are human beings and they deserve to be treated as such. Why should we push our citizens to live where we can’t send our wives and children to live? We are concerned about our people. We cannot allow them to take unnecessary risks. We are confident all will be well eventually insha Allah, but, we need some careful planning. We want to set up a Task Force on Evaluation, Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Re-integration of Victims of the insurgency and the Task Force will have representatives of all stakeholders. It will be a multi-faith and multi ethnic based so that every segment of the affected population is concerned be it citizens, associations, government or institutions from security to all others. We have a serious work before us. It is not child’s play that some people are advocating for mainly for their selfish and dehumanizing interests. We must learn to put politics aside where the existence of our citizens are involved. Power should not be our only concern at all points. There is more to life than desperation to access power.
