The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Northeast

  • ‘Northeast should be better organised’

    ‘Northeast should be better organised’

    Sir, as a dignitary at the Northeast Economic Summit in Gombe,  what would you say are  the burning  issues of the region now?

    Actually I had the privilege to represent my boss, Governor Ibrahim Gaidam  at both the Northeast Economic Summits in Yankari last year and of course this year’s summit in Gombe State. He asked me to attend and look into the things we promised to accomplish during the last year’s summit in Yankari and see how we can advance the partnership.

    When we gathered at the summit, I realised that there are things we need to collaborate and do together as a sub-region, especially where we need collective support from Mr. President, while certain roles are to be handled alone by the individual states. But, to be frank with you almost all the resolutions in Yankari were left dormant and there was no frame work to keep the six participating governors on their toes as regard to the implementation of the last summit resolution.

    What do you think is responsible for that?

    Basically, I think it was lack of follow-up; there was no coordination between the Summit Secretariat  and the individual state governors, there were no desk offices in the various states to be liaising with the secretariat and advise their state governors on what to do, and even those things that were outlined in the scorecard of the summit are things that the individual governor were doing on their own, some of them had even predates the Yankari summit. For instance, Yobe State convened the first socio-economic summit in 2008. We have been following the resolutions of our summit for the development of our state.

    Sir, can we conveniently say that not much has been achieved from the last year’s summit to this moment?

    Yes. The last economic summit in Yankari was not as successful as this summit but it was good because it provided a starting point. In everything one, you have to conceive the idea, make mistakes and learn from the mistakes. We can therefore say that Yankari summit was successful because it served as a springboard for us. We were able to convene and talk even though we didn’t do anything much but it was okay. It’s obvious that you must learn how to crawl before you walk and now I think we have to start walking.

    What in your opinion should be the way forward from here?

    It is my belief that we should have a frame work, a kind of body that can articulate all we have discussed in the summit and come up with a blueprint. I mean a document that can serve as a strategic development plan for the region. Secondly, to come up with something similar to Niger Delta Development Commission but, I am not saying that ours should be owned by the federal or state government, I mean something similar because we still have the Northern Nigeria Development Company. We need something similar to be headed by a senior citizen who enjoys a lot of respect from everyone in the sub region. Someone who can knock at the doors of the chief executives of the state and the door gets open for discussion. Someone who can go round to put them on their toes and who must have an  expert  team under him to be studying all the summited reports in the areas of education, infrastructures, agriculture, health and research for proper planning, at least this will ginger up the interest and commitment of all stakeholders in the sub-region.

    What can foster unity in the Northeast?

    We already have the good idea; what we need is proper planning and we should not be in a hurry to execute it. It’s important we follow the plan and abide by it.

    Northeast governors should have a platform like Northern Governors Forum that can be meeting to appraise what is coming out of the prospective Commission in the region, and to discover the economic advantage(s) that the individual states could harness for their collective gains. For instance, we have the Turkish International School in Yobe, that investment should be extended to other states and have more campuses across the sub-region, so that children would have quality education through government interventions. The same should be applied to other areas of infrastructures. Like I earlier mentioned, Chad Basin and Upper Benue Development Authority have been underutilised for long, before now a lot of people have been generating a lot of income from the activities in those areas, let’s look at them and see where they have problems so that the past glory should be regained. The body should keep us abreast with all the potentials bound in this sub-region. In this country, lack of continuity to policies and programmes is our major problem because, once there is change of government, no matter how good and important a programme or policy is to the community, it will stop. So continuity in programmes and policies is paramount, therefore, a law  should be enacted from the federal government down to the states level so as to guard and protect the ongoing programmes and policy of an administration. We should not allow those policies and programmes left by predecessors to be tempered with no matter the change of government, and by so doing people would appreciate the continuity in governments and other institutions.

    Beautiful ideas have been discussed at the Economic summit, what are you taking  home for implementation?

    We are taking the communique home and the secretariat would produce a report in form of document, for the governors to study the recommendations and swing into action.  We would have a certain body that would look into the result of the summit for onward planning’s. Already, we have started talking about dredging river Yobe and we have given some money to partners with chad basin. All these things would be studied with careful planning’s. Because with proper planning everything is possible, look at what Audu Bako did in Kano state, he constructed about twenty five dams in Kano state within a short period of stay in office, look at the result now.  Within a our time in Yobe we spent over 50 billion in construction of roads, we have finished almost 700km and the remaining 300km that made up the 1000km as promised is now ongoing, schools have been upgraded, qualified teachers were employed and portable drinking water has also been provided

    You also witnessed how His  Excellency, Governor Ibrahim Gaidam gave  65% fertilizer discount to farmers in the state, chemicals and insecticides were given out to farmers free, and we have been regular in paying our counterparts funds to IFAD, FADAMA, World Bank  etc. we have done very well at state level but, our main concern is how to collaborate in certain areas to push the northeast economy together. When the northeast governors collaborate in the area of roads construction, linking all the six states, movement of goods and services would be timely and effective and efficient and we can even raise some toll gates to be generating revenue for the states.

    Sir, many speakers  at the summit attributed the backwardness of theNortheast to education. What is your take on that?

    Northeast professors and doctors were part of the early brains of Ahmadu Bello University Zaria and other institutions in the country. Considering that, we have elites and educated minds at  the early stage but, the region has not benefited much from their knowledge and wealth of experience. So, I don’t think our problem should only be tied down to education because, if those people could come down and dedicate themselves to developing the region, the transformation in the areas  of agriculture, education, and infrastructural development would be enormous.

    The host governor, Ibrahim Dankwambo of Gombe state insisted while declaring the summit closed that action, Action! Action!  And Action is what every governor supposed to take home and I have seen reason in that, because without action all the beautiful ideas discussed will not take us anywhere.

    Sir, what do you think are areas  the governments of the region  partners private individuals to boost the Northeast economy.

    As government we are not supposed to be venturing into business, we should only allow individuals to come in small, medium and large scale entrepreneurs because, government has no business in doing business. As government, we will create the enabling environment by providing security, infrastructure, openness and transparency in the budgeting processes; looking at some areas we can give tax exemptions on certain kinds of businesses to allow investors to come in and develop the region.

    Thank you for your time sir.

     

  • Northeast to boost agriculture

    Governors of the six Northeast states rose from the 2013 Economic Summit in Gombe with the decision to develop a comprehensive regional agricultural master plan.

    The governors, in a communiqué at the end of the summit, also agreed to allocate 10 per cent of their annual budgets to agriculture and research.

    The plans to promote institutional building process for value chain approach as well as to promote agricultural value chain and clusters were also central to the decisions reached under the agriculture sub-theme.

    They all agreed to begin by conducting agro-potential studies for all the states, even as fostering stronger partnership and conclusion as well as promoting agricultural accountability were equally considered necessary to scaling up agri-business in the Northeast.

  • Beans: From Northeast to Lagos

    Beans: From Northeast to Lagos

    Though many markets, supermarkets, and neighbourhood kiosks sell beans, the official beans ‘warehouse’ in Lagos State is the Irepodun Market, Iddo. Traders popularly refer to it as Iddo-Elewa.

    There, the stalls are all laden with bags of beans and the heavy duty vehicles and trailers that throng the market daily deliver just one product – beans.

    According to Abdulfatai Akanji, the secretary-general of the Irepodun Market Association, the bulk of the beans consignment comes from the Northwest region of the country.

    Whether, it is oloyin or banjara, drum, Olo 1, or Olo 2, it is largely Yobe, Gombe, and Borno states that produce the beans consumed in Nigeria. And in those states, the bulk of the farming of beans takes place in the rural areas.

    After harvest, the beans farmers take their commodity to specialised beans market where traders from other parts of the country come to buy them.

    This is usually a tough journey. Akanji said: “Farmers from the remote areas do bring their goods after harvesting to the major cities where they have larger markets. Some of these markets are daily, weekly or five-day markets. Whenever they bring their beans there, our people from here who are traders would go there and purchase some of those from the farmers.”

    In Kano, the beans market is called Dawanau; in Borno State, it is the Muna market Maiduguri while it is Potiskum market in Yobe State. These markets operate daily and it is to those markets that the Iddo traders from Lagos go to buy beans.

    Akanji also said that though trade in beans is huge in Kano, planting of beans doesn’t thrive as much. With the transaction between the traders and the farmers over, the traders then pool resources to charter trailers to convey the beans down to Lagos.

    This is usually a 30-tonne truck loads about 300 one hundred kilograms bags of beans or 600 fifty-kilogram bags. And this journey takes about three to five days, according to Akanji, depending on how sound the engine of the truck is. For Lagos-bound trucks from Kano, it usually takes about three days.

    And daily, as trucks arrive in Irepodun market, retailers, restaurants, and individuals in need of beans in large quantity also throng daily to Iddo-Elewa to buy beans.

    “People from Badagry, Epe, Lekki, Ikorodu, Ikotun, and from all over Lagos State,” he said, “come here to buy beans.”

  • Jonathan infuriates Northeast the more

    Jonathan infuriates Northeast the more

    Given the central position the Northeast occupies in Nigeria’s insecurity map, it was expected that once the crown settled over his ears, President Goodluck Jonathan would dash to the region unsettled by Boko Haram insurgency to pacify it, or at least meet minds with stakeholders to devise a way out of the seething cauldron. He did nothing of such, preferring apparently to live in denial of the problem and its horrendous effects. He had wearied himself sending condolences to the dead and dying, and issuing ‘strongly-worded statements’ promising to ‘bring to book’ those instigating the killings in the affected states. It got to a point that even words seemed to fail. Then, finally, he appeared to resign himself only to ruminative contemplation of the scale and scope of the killings, waiting for the day in which both the killers and the killed in the Boko Haram states would exhaust themselves and foreswear both violence and victimhood.

    But just when living in denial seemed the perfect strategy for the president to engage the Northeast drama, out came nine ‘meddlesome’ and ‘politicking’ All Progressives Congress (APC) governors embarking on a daring and timely visit to the hot spots of the Boko Haram insurgency. The visit, which came amidst bomb explosions, was conducted with some defiant pageantry. The governors strolled through Maiduguri’s main square and market, waved to crowds of beleaguered north easterners who thought the rest of the country had forgotten about them, and issued mocking statements deploring presidential paralysis in the face of crippling insecurity. Cut to the quick, the presidency replied with unexampled insolence, equally denouncing the governors it claimed had specialised in enunciating policies and actions that were nothing but caviar to the general. It was clear that for the presidency, and given the intensity of the fight in the Northeast, discretion was the better part of valour.

    And so, after almost two years of issuing boring press releases and tepid, repetitive condolences, the president finally stirred himself and visited Borno and Yobe States, the epicentres of the Boko Haram insurgency. The APC governors had, according to a columnist with this newspaper, stolen the president’s thunder, but not to visit the region at all would have been even more provocative and indefensible than the poor judgement of visiting after the nine governors prompted a rethink of presidential tactics. For two days last week, therefore, the president shuffled around the two states, promising nothing and getting no commitments in return. If his recent manoeuvres within the ruling party, which led to the enthronement of dinosaurs like Chief Tony Anenih, presaged his interest in 2015, his utterances during his Northeast visit all but indicated he had given up on that entire region. The region had given him the worst headache, such that some of his aides and Niger Delta supporters believed an ethnic conspiracy was afoot to deny him the ‘enjoyment’ of his presidency. If the headache graduated from secret plots to open loathing, the president probably reasoned, it was merely a reflection of the region’s violent character.

    Jonathan’s visit was expected to trump the visit of the nine APC governors in financial and material succour, soothing words, empathy, and peace initiatives. He needed to speak peaceably with them. Instead, perhaps because of the said sour relationship between the president and the region, Jonathan unapologetically exchanged diatribe with the zone’s elders. There were no peace initiatives, and there was scant empathy. Indeed, he left the region so infuriated by his brusque remarks and dismissive, if not sardonic, characterisation of their requests that the states’ elders would have preferred he didn’t come. On the real reason the Borno Elders asked for the withdrawal of the Joint Military Task Force (JTF) from Borno and Yobe streets, which is connected with the alleged indiscriminate reprisal killings by soldiers, the president feigned ignorance. All the president deigned to say (See Box) was this: “Let me be very frank, because the analogy that oh, when one soldier is killed the soldiers come and kill scores of people, we have always been admonishing that. We always tell the soldiers to conduct themselves because they are doing internal security job that ordinarily soldiers are supposed not to be involved in.” What about promising investigation into the actions of soldiers who breached the rules of engagement? Nothing. How about sparing a thought and a modicum of human feeling for those extra-judicially murdered? Also, nothing. Sadly – and the president should know better – he seemed to have given the JTF carte blanche to rewrite the rules of engagement. He gave the impression that he felt more for soldiers who died in combat than civilians caught in the crossfire, as if one was any less a Nigerian than the other. Worse, he appallingly and scornfully downplayed the allegation that JTF carried out unlawful killings.

    More humiliating to the elders was the president’s direct response to the request for JTF’s withdrawal from Borno State. He incredulously wanted the elders to indemnify him against any loss of life once the JTF was withdrawn. The president puts it very inelegantly in his convoluted lexical fashion: “If the elders agree now to come and sign agreement with me that I should move out all the JTF, but if anybody dies in Borno State, I will hold them responsible. I will sign and I will move, and I will do it. If somebody dies, yes, I will take you. I am going to remove the JTF, but come and sign and I will remove the JTF and you guarantee the safety of life and property of individuals. When you do that today, as I am going, the JTF will start moving to their barracks. But you must guarantee, if anything happens to anybody, that you must be held responsible.” Not only did the president imply that the elders had the power to guarantee peace, he also gave the impression that he could cavalierly withdraw security agents from Borno simply because a few elders gave their word. Were this the way the world fought crime and governed their people, anarchy would have since taken over.

    Perhaps the most ominous statement the president made was his reaction to the killing of security agents. Why and how he thought anybody believed he celebrated the death of a security agent by showing restraint is hard to fathom. This is what he had to say on the subject: “I have given the directive to security services, I don’t want to hear that one soldier is killed in the Niger Delta; I don’t want to hear that one security officer is killed in the South East kidnapping; I don’t want to hear that one soldier is killed in Borno State or any part of this country. I cannot preside over this country as a president and my security officers are killed. This people leave their families, stay on the roads and the bush so that we will sleep and I will not want to hear that one of them is killed. We will not allow it and I will not celebrate death of one security officer anywhere in this country…We will not, and I repeat, will not accommodate it.”

    Now, Borno Elders probably understand why the president delayed his visit. He was obviously too angry to visit before now; and the visit when it finally came was to read the riot act, not only to the Boko Haram states, but to any other state where security agents are killed. His priority is, by implication, to guarantee the lives of security agents. So, now, will the president begin applying the Odi method perfected by Chief Olusgeun Obasanjo, and which he himself condemned as ineffective? If anyone still holds out hope that Jonathan has the depth and judgement to rule a complex nation, especially one facing dire ethnic and religious challenges, I offer to the optimist the president’s view on the consequences of killing security agents. And if anyone thinks we are not in even deeper trouble than we imagine, I offer the same presidential remark as an example. Let every community in the country beware; even their deviants cannot afford to bite a soldier, protest against police tyranny, or fight a security official to the death.

    After the president’s visit, Borno and other states oppressed by Boko Haram terror now know where they stand. They stand alone; and the peace overtures they faintly hoped the president would bring, consequent upon the salutary visit of the APC governors, has become a chimera. Dr Jonathan has all but abdicated his responsibility as a president. He thinks that that responsibility lies with the people and leaders of the states groaning under Boko Haram terror. He probably believes that if the elders tell the fundamentalists to sheathe their swords, the militants would instantly do so. Nigeria would be a paradise the day a few elders had such sweeping moral and political force to command obedience from the populace. What is indeed clear from the president’s visit is that he has absolutely no idea left on how to solve the Boko Haram menace. Worse, he has served notice that state application of terror as a response to fundamentalist terror would henceforth serve as effective deterrence. God help Nigeria as Jonathan embraces Lord Lugard’s Indirect Rule and prepares the ground for fascism.

    Considering all these troubling things, it is tempting to ask who the president’s advisers are, and what kind of advice they give him. In fact, more appropriately, we should ask who Jonathan really is; what his mind is made of; and whether in 2011 we didn’t after all buy a pig in a poke.

     

  • Secession: Igbo youths call for arrest of Northeast leaders

    A group, the World Igbo Youths Council (WIYC), has urged the Federal Government to arrest the conveners of the North East Development (NED) for allegedly calling for the secession of the zone from Nigeria.

    The group said the call should be seen as a treasonable felony.

    In a statement by its Chairman, Board of Trustees, Comrade Chuks Ibegbu, WIYC said the call, when Boko Haram was attempting to dismember Nigeria, showed that some highly placed Nigerians were sponsoring the militant group.

    It said: “No part of Nigeria must be allowed to secede. Nigeria has come to stay. We shall all stay here and salvage Nigeria.

    “The Federal Government must, therefore, take steps to apprehend those calling for secession and prosecute them for high treason. They have committed the same offence for which the Movement for the Actualisation of the State of Biafra (MASSOB) is being hounded around since 2000.

    In fact, their (NED’s) offence is worse because government officials and political actors from the North East attended the occasion where the call was made.”