Maiduguri: Herwa to Laiya

I cast back my mind to 1979 when I enrolled at the University of Maiduguri. Then, Maiduguri was indeed the Home of Peace. A welcoming town where the Igbo community was one of the largest minorities. When the late Shehu Mustapha died, the Igbo community closed shops for 3 days. It was the time of […]

I cast back my mind to 1979 when I enrolled at the University of Maiduguri. Then, Maiduguri was indeed the Home of Peace. A welcoming town where the Igbo community was one of the largest minorities. When the late Shehu Mustapha died, the Igbo community closed shops for 3 days. It was the time of Gomna Goni, a hopeful time.  Politics was exciting and colourful. The economy was booming. Merchants came to Maiduguri from Central African Republic, Cameroun, Chad and Niger. Lake Chad sustained the lives of more than 30 million in Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroun. Every day no less than 100 trucks left Maiduguri for the southern part of the country with livestock, fresh food and grains. Night life in Maiduguri was exiting. The most popular night club was Top Calypso Hotel and the leading band was Kamal and his group.
Maiduguri also attracted Muslim scholars and pupils from far and near. It is the tradition in Nigeria that you have to go to the “east,” i.e., to Maiduguri, to complete your Islamic scholarship. Muslim scholarship in Maiduguri was relatively moderate buttressed much earlier in the correspondence between Mohammed Bello, intellectual leader of the Fulani Jihadists and El-Kanemi, intellectual leader of Bornu who argued against attacking Borno under the pretext of purifying Islam.
Back to the present, the situation is laiya. No one symbolizes this situation more than the Governor of Borno State who cries when he talks about the State. He is now our crying governor. When I asked for estimates of people killed and guns recovered, I got figures of 20,000 to 30,000 killed by government security agencies and  ’atu Ahli Sunnah Lidda’awati Wal-Jihad (JSLJ) and 4,000 to 5,000 guns recovered by security agencies since 2009.
My attempt to celebrate the end of the Ramadan there didn’t materialize. No one was allowed to drive into Maiduguri on the Kano-Maiduguri road starting from Friday August 9, 8pm. By the time I turned to go back to Damaturu on Saturday afternoon, more than 100 vehicles were stuck at the check point.  I learnt later that no one was allowed into Maiduguri from any of the access roads in to the town. Interestingly some of those who were not allowed into Maiduguri travelled 200 kilometres to make phone calls in Yobe State because phone lines were disconnected since mid-May when a state of emergency was declared. Remarkably people in Maiduguri seem to have accepted to live without phone connection.
I passed through Mainok, a community recently victimized by JSLJ and Joint Task Force (JTF) violence. It was deserted. JSLJ killed all the Muslim clerics for daring to ask members of the community to swear by the Quran that they didn’t know any member of JSLJ. JTF alleged that it is a stronghold of JSLJ.
There are signs of hope.  Maiduguri witnessed its famous durbar for the first time in four years. It is significant that the Shehu rode on his horse a distance of about 2 kilometres from the Eid ground at Murtala Mohammed square to his palace. Hundreds of well-wishers converged at the palace. It was a sign of community resilience. Indeed Maiduguri is gradually recovering. Many parts of the city which were deserted are now being inhabited. Streets that no one dared to pass through are more accessible.  The night economy is coming back. People move around more freely. Ceremonies are organized. This is thanks to yangora or civilian JTF or citizen JTF as it is variously known.
Young men have taken over the security of the town and are also organizing in the rural areas. They succeeded in fishing out alleged JSLJ members in various parts of Maiduguri. These volunteers mount check points to check the activities of JSLJ. Their attempt to burn down the house of former Borno state governor, Modu Sheriff, whom they alleged to be a sponsor of JSLJ, was foiled by security agencies. Although they haven’t succeeded in burning down his house, they have succeeded in stopping him from visiting Maiduguri. Government security agencies warned him no one could protect him there.
But these young men have become victims of recent killings by JSLJ. In the last 2 months, not less than 200 of them have been killed. Government has to rethink the involvement of these young men. It is probably better to integrate them into regular security outfits or work with them side by side, especially in the rural areas.  Otherwise they are sitting ducks waiting to be killed by those who are better armed than even government security agencies. There is also the danger of their being armed with sophisticated weapons by unscrupulous elements. In addition, the government should find a way to compensate them, to prevent them from resorting to extortion of the public or joining the payroll of dirty politicians whose desperation about the 2015 general elections could make any armed group of young men invaluable. Or can it be that the government security agents have chosen to outsource the protection of lives and properties to volunteer young men who are without visible means of income and armed only with cutlasses, sticks, bows and arrows?
I have heard different types of conversations and silences at dinner tables. In April I heard allegations of numerous atrocities by government security agencies including rape, torture, extortion, detention without trial and extrajudicial killings. There was less of that discussion in August, when most discussions were of alleged atrocities of JSLJ especially extortion, killings and car-jacking. In my naiveté I couldn’t comprehend some of the allegations made against JSLJ members. I heard stories of drugs, human flesh, blood and women found in compounds of alleged JSLJ members. Paradoxically many of the crimes were committed by people they knew, not total strangers. Many people became aware that their neighbours and children were members of JSLJ only after the civilian JTF arrested them. Take the example of a village head who was threatened to be killed if he didn’t pay N250,000. After talking to several people, everyone advised him to do so because they concluded no government security could protect him.
Another person similarly threate-ned reported the matter to security agencies that set a trap and caught the person responsible. When the village head heard about the arrest he went to bail the detainee because he was his tenant and a qualified teacher. Unknown to the village head, the young man had confessed to the security agencies the victims of his atrocities including him the village head! This is pure criminality and has nothing to do with Islam.

Citizen JTF members committed gross human rights violations but there was a code of silence about that. I heard stories of alleged JSLJ members caught and killed without any recourse to due process. Maybe I would have behaved the same if I lived in Maiduguri today.
Government and volunteers have begun to win some battles against JSLJ, the hard task of winning the war against JSLJ must begin in earnest.  For Maiduguri to return to Herwa/Yerwa will take time, probably many years, but there is the fierce urgency of now as Martin Luther King, Jnr. would put it. The immediate steps are to provide healing and counselling to members of the public who are direct victims and witnesses of violence; establish “Friends of Borno/Northeast” that brings together development partners, private sector, philanthropists, national and international agencies and governments to begin to invest significantly in socio-economic restructuring of the region/state. Central to the strategy of restructuring the socio-economic situation is improvement of the condition and status of girls, young men, women and children. The neglect this category of persons partly laid the condition for thriving of JSLJ. We need to dismantle the current educational system that is corrupt and dysfunctional, and rethink the relationship between traditional (Tsangaya/Islamiyya) and secular systems. In this regard, I don’t subscribe to having two universities each in Borno and Yobe states. Instead the resources used to establish the new institutions of Borno State University, and the Federal University in Gashua should be used to strengthen primary and secondary education. The later can be done if the Federal Government takes over the Yobe State University to enable the State Government shift resources to primary and secondary levels of education.
Similarly, the Federal Government should be more sensitive to the plight of people in Borno and Yobe States. It is pitiful  that the Federal Government gave N250 million and N150 million as assistance to Borno and Yobe States respectively while each of these states have spent more than N6 billion to combat insecurity. Surely the victims of post 2011 election violence in Kano State who received about N1 billion haven’t suffered as much as those in Borno and Yobe States. It is in this realm that some form of compensation and rehabilitation which the governments of these two states have been doing should be augmented by the Federal Government.
This can also be complimented by philanthropists emulating Dangote Foundation. We need scholarly understanding of the violence in the region. We should rethink communication policy in responding to insurgency. I can almost predict the next round of violence based on statements from government leaders. Many of these statements are also issued at religious congregations. Last and not the least is to develop a program to promote religious pluralism and combat intolerance.

Shettima chairs the NGO Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja