My commentaries on Boko Haram’s madness in Borno state began in February, 2012 when I wrote a piece entitled: “Jonathan and Bornophobia”. In that piece, I challenged the immediate past president to visit the epicentre of the terror war in his capacity as the president and commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria to assess the situation by himself.
But because of the fear of Borno, he never accepted the challenge until a couple of years later when the 2015 general elections beckoned.
The man in the eye of the storm (of the Boko Haram) and Governor of Borno state, Alhaji Kashim Shettima, has been bearing the brunt of the unenviable inheritance (from Sen. Ali Modu Sheriff) since he mounted the saddle in 2011. No one should envy him. I don’t! While other governors have been running the affairs of their states with both eyes closed, Shettima, until lately, had had his heart in his mouth. It got to a point that virtually all local government areas of the state were under the thumb of the insurgents.
On a few occasions, the terrorists, emboldened by their conquests, attempted to overrun the state capital, Maiduguri. Strangely enough, he never ran away.
At the height of hostilities, Shettima became the weeping governor. His people were at the mercy of the criminal elements because the troops were ill-equipped and ill-motivated to challenge the terrorists. He risked his life visiting victims of the terrorists at various locations.
It is never easy managing a war situation as Governor Shettima has done in the past five years and still keeping the machinery of government running especially in the face of dwindling revenue and hostility of the federal government during the Jonathan era. It is on record that the governor is not indebted to workers in his state. He pays their salaries on the 26th of every month, and this runs into N2.6b, whereas, most of his counterparts, who have no insurgency to contend with, are wallowing in arrears of workers’ salaries running into several months.
How he is able to achieve the feat has remained an enigma. But it takes a lot of sacrifice to achieve that, considering the fact that the economy of the state has since collapsed as a result of Boko Haram’s extremism. This must have taken its toll on the state’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR).
The assumption in some quarters was that he was able to achieve the impossibility of managing the post-war crisis along with prompt payment of workers’ salaries as a result of donations from all over the place believed to be running into billions of cash both in local and foreign currencies at his disposal.
So, it was a huge surprise to discover that there was no such hefty manna falling on Shettima’s laps then and now. The whole world got to know this startling revelation recently when newsmen sought his response over claims in the mainstream and social media that billions of cash funneled into the government’s coffers as well as food supplies to cater for the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the state were being re-funneled into the pockets of government officials.
Shettima then reeled out the list of donors as follows:
Jonathan’s administration – N200m (in four years); Lagos state – N50m (2015); Edo state – N25m (in 2013); Kano state – N20m (2013); Adamawa state – N20m (2013); Ekiti state – N10m (2013); Osun state – N10m (2013); Kaduna state – N5m and Unity Bank – N5m. A woman with the milk of kindness, who preferred to lie low, donated N100, 000, bringing the total cash donations to N345m. Conversely, the state government was shelling an average of N600m every month to cater for IDPs throughout the Jonathan era.
He was eager to further explain that international partners operate in such a way that they have technical partners that implement their interventions. His words:
“We have received tremendous support from some parts of the international community but no foreign country or any international partner within or outside the United Nations and major world donors gave any cash to our administration from 2011 to date for the purpose of IDPs, but rather, all donations come in form of materials like medical supplies, technical supports and food items, most of which are directly distributed by the international partners themselves to reach IDPs in different parts of Borno state. The amounts you might have heard through the media were not cash donated to Borno by international partners, but rather items and services worth such amounts mentioned to the public. They do not give cash. For instance, there was a time the General Electric (GE) graciously donated $1m to Borno in support of the IDPs. I was at the presentation in Abuja; I was even presented the symbolic cheque but the money was paid to UNICEF which in turn implemented the GE’s intervention in the area of healthcare and nutrition.
“When the Government of Norway announced a donation of $4m, the money wasn’t given in form of cash to Borno. It was the worth of their food supplies and these food supplies are being distributed by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) which deals directly with the IDPs in Borno.
The ICRC has made the highest humanitarian intervention in Borno but we don’t even know how much they have spent. They have their men on ground who deal directly with the IDPs across Borno state.”
He noted: “The World Food Programme also makes intervention of food and recently, they are doing conditional cash transfers and that also is handled by officials of the World Food Programme. If there is one organisation that has given us any cash donation outside the N345m for IDPs, it was the Dangote Foundation which gave Borno N400m but that wasn’t for IDPs; it was an economic empowerment programme for women which the Dangote Group launched in different states including Lagos, Kano, Jigawa, Kogi, Adamawa and Yobe in which N10, 000 each was given to about 300, 000 or 400, 000 women across these states I mentioned. The N2bn Dangote announced in support of Borno two months ago, we requested that he shouldn’t give us cash but building materials worth the amount”.
Shettima said as far as 2012, he foresaw the shenanigans now playing out on this issue of intervention on IDPs, hence he made it a policy not to deal with cash but supplies, and even on the supplies, when the food is much in most cases, he insisted that the donors should supervise the distribution of the items to the IDPs.
It was exactly what the government did with the 104 trailers of victuals donated by Dangote Foundation for the Ramadan feeding for IDPs. Officials of Dangote were on ground to supervise the entire distribution.
The governor then wondered where this issue of Borno collecting billions of cash for the wellbeing of IDPs came from. He lamented that the state government was the one bearing the major brunt of managing the over two million IDPs throughout the Jonathan era, which is the highest number South of Sahara.
It is, however, no surprise that some smart alecs have devised the means to profit from the misfortunes of the IDPs by reeling out pictures of malnourished IDPs to canvass for donations from some organisations within and outside the country.
Some (political) mischief peddlers have also keyed into the hardship, tarring the state governor with a brush of calumny in relation to the hunger that has ravaged a large number of malnourished kids, particularly those recently rescued from the jaws of Boko Haram at the Bama camp. He immediately ordered the evacuation of the affected kids before the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) or Doctor Without Borders (DWB) went to town with the shocking revelation.
The humanitarian crisis in Borno is such that it cannot be left to the state government alone to grapple with. It has been very easy for the insurgents to ruin the entire state and its economy but the onerous task of rebuilding it and resettling the IDPs falls on all of us.
It is a pleasant development that the Senate has been moved to pity by the revelation of the plight of the IDPs and has urged the Federal Government to as a matter of urgency release monies from the T.Y. Danjuma-led Victims Support Fund (VSF) to contain the worrisome situation.
The Senate also urged the federal government to release necessary funds to immediately arrest this developing situation “by freeing up a strategic framework for the release and distribution of monies (about N10bn) from the service wide vote appropriated for lDPs in the 2016 budget”.
The N10bn will go a long way in easing the greatest burden of the cross which Shettima alone has been bearing. It will also avert the gathering epidemic catastrophes that could claim the lives of a large population of those fortunate enough to survive the Boko Haram’s cruelty.
