Babachir Lawal: I was displaced by Boko Haram

Tears welled up in the audience as Babachir David Lawal,  Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF)  narrated his harrowing  experience and that of the multitude of citizens in Nigeria’s north east states  in the hands of  Boko Haram.

It was on Thursday at the 21st Nigerian Economic Summit (NES) in Abuja, where he  collected the report of the summit, on behalf of President Muhammadu Buhari.

And in urging the summit to come up with an economic model for the reconstruction of the North east, devastated by Boko Haram, he went into a spell-binding narrative of the nature of the disaster, about bridges being blown up, communities disconnected, telephone base stations destroyed, schools, houses burnt, millions of people deprived of their day-to-day  economic engagements.

He said he himself was an Internally Displaced Person (IDP) for six months in 2014, due to the activity of Boko Haram.

He lost his home, farmland and cattle when his home town in Adamawa State was attacked by the sect.

”Five local governments in the northern senatorial district (of Adamawa) were completely taken over by insurgents. Two local governments in the central senatorial district – mine and the next one on the way to Yola – were completely taken over by insurgents.

“Within that period, four people, my younger ones and others were on admission at the hospital in Mubi, the next big town to my own, where there’s some presence of general hospital.

“When Boko Haram entered Mubi, all the people had to evacuate the hospital and run into the mountains, no matter the degree of your sickness.

”My younger brother whose children were in that hospital, was visiting; he had to evacuate. For two weeks, we didn’t know where they were, because they ran into the mountains.

“The telephones, the base stations had been blown by Boko Haram. In any case, the battery had run out of the telephones. We didn’t know whether they were eating or whether they were dead. We didn’t know where they were.

“The total number of cattle in my village (where) everybody was a livestock keeper was 385. When people had to run for their lives, the last thing they would think about is cows, goats and chickens.

He spoke about the kidnapped Chibok girls, how two of the girls were his own relations and one of them had arrived Lagos to take part in the West African School Certificate Examination.

According to him, the Federal Government needs to design an economic model to take the Northeast out of its present woes.

Lawal lamented that the region had never experienced economic prosperity with only three months of rainfall during the rainy season.

He added that investors were showing little interest in the region.

The condition, he said, was made worse by the fact that Adamawa and Yobe enjoyed about 33Kva of electricity. Babachir added that the economic difficulties were heightened by the Boko Haram insurgency, which robbed the region of its little economic potential, destroyed electricity and communication equipment.

The state of fear and anarchy in the region, he said, forced many residents to acquire firearms to protect themselves against possible attacks and kidnapping.