Dogara’s clarion call for North-East Donor Conference

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has requested for the convening of an international donors conference that would raise funds for the economic and infrastructural needs of the Northeast devastated by six-year violent insurgency. Dogara, first made the call in a motion he personally sponsored in August last year, on the urgent […]

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has requested for the convening of an international donors conference that would raise funds for the economic and infrastructural needs of the Northeast devastated by six-year violent insurgency.
Dogara, first made the call in a motion he personally sponsored in August last year, on the urgent need for rehabilitation, recovery, reconstruction and resettlement of the ravaged region.
Since then, at every fora, the Speaker has continued to champion the plights of the Northeast while arguing that the region deserve global attention as a member of the international community.
His request is in line with what has been happening since the end of the World War II where international conferences were held for Western Europe and Japan which led to the adoption of the Marshall Plan. Permit me to say here that similar donor conferences had been held for Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan among others. There is therefore, no reason why it can’t be held for Nigeria’s northeast. This is the kind of patriotic zeal that comes when visionary leaders are allowed to be in front.
It should be noted that, the scale of devastation and destruction in the region far supersedes what happened in some of the countries and regions listed above but which the international community didn’t hesitate to come to their aid.
The region, even before the violence erupted years ago, is one of the poorest in the world. A recent report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said Borno state alone has lost trillions of Naira economic wise, while not fewer than 20,000 people were killed even though most of us who come from the north east strongly believe that the number of casualty far outweighs the official figure of 20,000 with some putting it at over 100,000.
All one need to be convinced about a call for such is to take a trip to some of the villages recently liberated in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states. Communities were not only totally razed to the ground but one is left with no option than to conclude that the insurgents were all out to annihilate every living being in the affected areas.
The Boko Haram have succeeded in leaving to waste large swaths of territories in those states, especially Borno state, which happened to be the epicenter of the violence.
Right now, officially over 2.2 million Nigerians are living as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in several states of the country including the Federal Capital Territory, while thousands others are refugees in Cameroon, Chad and Niger Republic. Again, the number of IDPs is far more than 2.2 million as it ranges between 5 million to 5.5 million because majority of those displaced are not living camps but are being housed by relations both within and outside the affected areas.
To buttressed Dogara’s appeal for an international donor conference, UNHCR Representative to Nigeria, Ms Angele Dikongue- Atangana, during the UNHCR 2015 stakeholders’ briefing of the commission’s representation in Nigeria, urged donors and partners to take a trip to the ‘field’ to be aware of the level of destruction for a better understanding of the situation.
This is because there are dozens of villages in the northeast that have been totally destroyed. The case of the attack on Dalori is still fresh in our minds where reports said entire houses in the village were torched. The enormity of the task ahead in rebuilding the area, especially the cost is something that even the federal government might not be able to totally shoulder hence the call for the donor conference.
This much was also agreed  by the Chairman, Presidential Committee on Northeast Initiative, retired Lt.-Gen. Theophilus Danjuma recently, when he said that conservatively,  over two trillion naira (N2 trillion) will be required in the short-term to rebuild areas devastated by the Boko Haram insurgency. This is just for the short term measure! 
But issues of topmost importance for the Northeast revolve around housing, health care, women and youth empowerment, education and agriculture.  Sufficiently meeting these needs would require the involvement of the international community. As with these areas targeted, the people of the region stand the chance of having positive multiplier effect.
This is why the request by the Speaker for an international donor conference is apt, timely and holds the solution to addressing the destruction in the Northeast, because other places have held such international conferences with success.
The International Donors Conference for reconstruction and development in Darfur, which was held in Doha, Qatar from 7-8 April 2013 brought together representatives of the Government of Sudan, the international donor community, the development banking sectors and development partners to discuss economic recovery, development and poverty eradication in the aftermath of the conflict in Darfur.
Likewise the Syrian donor conference held in London recently where over $10 billion was pledged. The United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hailed the conference as a “great success,” saying, “Never has the international community raised so much money on a single day for a single crisis.”
Hassan is Special Adviser (Media & Public Affairs) to the Speaker, House of Representatives.