Letter from Gwoza
When the helicopter blades eventually stop, the first thing you notice is the silence. This is no longer a bustling border town, there are no car horns. There is no traffic other than the military who escort us everywhere. The Mandera Mountains sit to our east and yet there are no birds. This is neither city nor countryside. In 2014, Gwoza was the declared centre of the Boko Haram caliphate, considered easy to defend, destruction began. The hospital was razed, the cars burned to rusty shells. In August this year, wild poliovirus considered eliminated, was confirmed.
Today, this is a garrison town. The Brigadier General is proud of what has been achieved over the past year, an apocalypse averted. The town now secured, is heavily guarded on all sides. We are informed that Gwoza is home to over 37,000 internally displaced people, most are women and children. It is not safe to return to their land to farm. Normal life may be many years away.
We stop at a football stadium walled on three sides. The front wall is being constructed as preparations are underway by the United Nations to build a humanitarian hub that will provide storage for essential food and supplies and safe accommodation for aid workers. During the light banter about football, the Brigadier General informs us that the area was used for public executions. We look around trying to take in the scene and the silence returns.
But things are improving by the day. International humanitarian agencies are supporting the government, providing shelter, clean water, sanitation and food. At the end of the camp we are led to a programme for traumatised children. Under a large tree, there are two rings, the girls are dancing, lifting their light limbs in the air. The boys are lined up to play “Tug of War”. Somebody whispers in my ear that the children had forgotten how to play. Most could only draw pictures of guns and dead bodies. This is a slow process but every day there is progress. The games are played to the constant claps and chants and the sing-along choruses. The children are singing now. Not all of them, but more and more each day.
This is a place where hope begins again. Maybe the birds will return with the next rains. Everybody is wishing for something. The silence lingers as we leave the camp. As we are escorted back to the helicopter we know that silence is better than the horrors that once filled this place. The sound of children singing is drowning out the gunfire of the past. The blades start to churn and I snap back into the moment watching Gwoza get smaller and smaller. The two circles in the camp merge with the rectangular remains of the burned out houses and the off-square tents as we rise high into the harmattan dust.
Ambassador Seán Hoy
11 November 2016
Letter from Kano
Arriving in Kano for the first time, two years after beginning my posting in Nigeria felt like a visit to a whole new country. I was invited by His Highness the Emir of Kano, Mohammad Sanusi II to attend the Durbar, the colourful pageant when all 44 local governments participate in a vivid re-enactment of the military parades of the past. This is a distinctly Northern affair.
The Emir welcomed the larger delegation to his court before a privileged few were invited for a private luncheon when the Emir provided a brief history of Kano. Once the largest and most important city in West Africa, Kano was the crossroads for trade. Within the walled city, leather, pottery and metal works were exchanged in return for salt, silks, Islamic books and perfumes.
Here, life is outdoors, dry and hot but cool in the shade and a welcome respite from the humidity further south. The culture is Islamic and the traditional djellabas prove the smart option as our European suits stick to our backs. Kano is clean, the streets are well laid out and the traditional riders of the Durbar, in their exotic and singular costumes trot by in easy indifference to the modern world. The occasional pair of sunglasses belies the age old tradition, with participants dressing in the costumes of their fathers and grandfathers moving at a steady trot with all hands engaged in holding down their horses through the crowded streets.
The highlight of the visit was however time spent in the company of His Excellency the Emir. Dressed in traditional costume, it was tempting to be overcome by a feeling that here was a man from another time, out of contact with the modern world. This doubt was immediately dispelled once the Emir engaged with his softly spoken Oxford voice. He is calm and reflective in everything he says, only deviating when he stops to talk about the poor when you can see a lump rise in his throat. The Emir, who was the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and had previously been Managing Director of one of Nigeria’s largest banks, can talk with authority on the challenges of today while rooting them deep in the historical challenges of Nigeria itself.
As a renowned Islamic scholar and a senior representative of a major faith based organisation, the Emir has taken on the mantle of a civil society leader drawing on his years of office to reflect on what has not worked and where Nigeria must go to face the challenges ahead. Recent press articles have challenged those in authority. This, he believes, is part of his role as someone who once worked in Government and who now spends his days meeting with the poor in his home State of Kano.
The Emir is proud of his early education by Irish missionaries in Jos. He is a scholar who has travelled and absorbed different cultures while holding firm to his own beliefs. He holds an easy court, welcoming contributions and enjoying a healthy exchange of views. He is engaging without confrontation. Such evenings in the tradition of the company of wise men, can go far into the night.
The agenda is perhaps always the same. That Nigeria has yet to meet its full potential is not contested. In these especially tough times, when the oil price crash has resulted in a shortage of foreign exchange that plays havoc with the exchange rate and inflation, there is a lot of talk about diversification. Nigeria has been here before but there is the steady realisation that the good times when petrodollars will rise the tide and float all boats may never return. There is more oil now than before driven by access to new technologies and the desire by countries to secure their own supplies. If ever Nigeria needed a new vision, it is now.
The unspoken assumption, written between the lines of all the analysis of the current plight of Nigeria, is that the answer lies in a return to the recent past when the petrodollars were the life blood of the country. President Buhari has recorded progress against terrorist groups and taken assertive action against the corruption which has bled Nigeria dry. The economy has proven a more complex challenge. Perhaps the most sobering point that the Emir shared was that the challenge that his grandfather faced sixty years ago when he set about industrialising Kano, remains today. The once thriving factories are long abandoned making way to cheap imports. Unemployed youths are on the rise as population growth remains unchecked. Young men need the dignity of paid labour to contribute to their own development. The impressive Kano Chamber of Commerce acknowledge the challenge and serve as a first contact for potential investors. There is much to do but there are also huge opportunities. Everybody talks about the need to generate power for industrialisation with solar being an obvious winner in Kano.
While the challenges the Emir outlines may ruffle feathers in some quarters, the burden of moving forward is not placed in the lap of any one institution. It is the shared responsibility for all, for Government, the Chambers of Commerce, civil society, the working man and woman in Nigeria and of course, those of us who represent the international community.
Ambassador Seán Hoy
20 September 2016
