Buhari’s request to World Bank and imperative of post-war palliatives

RECENTLY, Nigerian newspapers and the social media were awash with criticisms over the reported request by President Muhammadu Buhari (GCFR), to the World Bank, that the body should concentrate its development efforts on the North-East geopolitical zone.

That view expressed by the president has been portrayed in different lights. Some described the president as an ethnic bigot, saying it was a clear sign of the discriminatory rule he has subjected the country to since he came to power. Others averred that President Buhari was, indeed, the North’s president instead of being the Nigeria’s president, pontificating that his popular “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody” statement during his inauguration was a mere smokescreen.

What is sad, however, is the fact that some of these comments did not come from credible camps. Some of the commentators were driven by their hatred for the anti-corruption crusade of the president, which has encircled them, as they are facing serious scrutiny from the anti-graft body, EFCC, over the looted Nigerians wealth. Some of the other critics took that path because they are still suffering from their losses of the last elections and had never seen anything good about President Buhari and his government. Some simply do not wish him good luck.

It is, therefore, clear that some of the criticisms about the president’s discussion with the president of World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, are punctuated with jaundiced views. It is also interesting to note that Yong Kim had clarified that his views were quoted out of context.

Granted that President Buhari did make that request to the World Bank; he must have been moved by the fact that the North-East has been ravaged by the conflict generated by Boko Haram. It is not difficult to discern that in the last few years, human and physical developments have come to a standstill in that part of the country—children are no longer going to school; houses were destroyed, making thousands of people homeless, hospitals were shattered, farms were destroyed to the extent that there were no farming activities in the areas where the military had engaged the terrorists. It is also pitiable that some Nigerians, particularly in the North-East, had become refugees and displaced persons in their home country.

It was, therefore, necessary and not out of place for the president to go cap in hands to the World Bank and Allied institutions for materials and financial support for the victims of the ongoing conflicts in the North-East. I wish to emphasise that the request of Mr. President that attention should be shifted to the North-East is the most appropriate thing in the peculiar circumstance of the state of affairs in that part of the country. That request was not a selfish one; rather, it is the traditional way of ensuring massive reconstruction and rehabilitation in areas ravaged by war and other crisis.

For students of history, it would be recalled that part of the post-civil war solution employed by the Federal Government in 1970 was that it declared an emergency in the construction and rehabilitation of the Eastern states in order to reduce the pains of the war victims.

Similarly, after the Second World War, the Allied Forces came up with the Marshal Plan with the sole aim of rehabilitating the victims of the war and to enable them recover to from the poverty imposed on them by the war. The Marshal Plan was an American Initiative meant to rebuild Western European economies. It was a post-war palliative.

Therefore, as I followed the trends of comments and criticisms regarding the reported request by President Buhari, one thing that came to mind was the need to encourage Nigerians to love their neighbours [especially those of other ethnicities] and sympathize with the Nigerians in the North-East where progress is being retarded on a daily bases due to no fault of theirs. While democracy allows freedom to express opinions, it is imperative that Nigerians learn to do things, including criticisms, that will unite the country rather than divide its citizens.

Finally, I also took solace in the view expressed by Dr. Bukola Saraki in faraway Petersburg, Russia, while addressing the Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly, where he urged the International Community to organise a global conference aimed at galvanising international resources to mitigate the devastation and the deteriorating human condition in the North-Eastern part of the country as well as the continuous threat posed by the Boko Haram terrorists. Of a truth, the development of Nigeria as a whole should be the focus and concern of our leaders, but it is not out of place or unfounded to make special requests for developments in war-ravaged and crisis-ridden zones.

Hon. (Prince) Adeogun, a member of the House of Representatives from Osun State, writes from Abuja.