BAUCHI State governor, Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar, has urged the Presidential Committee on the North-East Initiative (PCNI) to come up with sustainable development programmes by involving the major stakeholders, especially the political leadership of the North-East region, in the planning and reconstruction, rehabilitating and economic recovery efforts of the areas devastated by the activities of Boko Haram insurgency.
According to a press statement signed and made available to the Nigerian Tribune by the Press Secretary to the governor, Abubakar Al-Sadique, Governor Abubakar told the PCNI Vice Chairman, Alhaji Tijjani Musa Tumsah, that the bottom-up approach was the best option in planning government intervention programme in the Northeast.
“In planning the intervention programme, the bottom-up approach is the best approach, and the committee needs to treat all states in the region holistically, especially in addressing the root of the insurgency which are the same in all the states. We in Bauchi are ready to work and give you feedbacks,” the governor was quoted as saying.
While lamenting that “illiteracy, lack of economic empowerment are the major causes” exploited to recruit thousands of youths into the Boko Haram insurgency, Governor Abubakar stated that large-scale agriculture using water sources to irrigate farmlands would provide easy employment opportunities and eradicate unemployment that provides the chances of youths being manipulated and recruited into banditry.
The governor stressed that agriculture, which provided employment to about 85 per cent of the region’s population, must be embraced and approached with “seriousness by improving the capacity of our farmers and mechanising agriculture to increase yields,” and emphasised that the committee must invest heavily in that critical sector.
He also stressed the need for the committee to improve the health infrastructure of the region, noting that the available health centres in Bauchi State were being overstretched with the internally displaced persons (IDPs).
According to the governor, “the health infrastructure of Bauchi State is inadequate because when we came into office in 2015, we had to turn round the sector by constructing 19 new health centres with VIP toilets and staff quarters to reduce hundreds of avoidable infant mortality and other deaths associated with childbirths,” adding that his administration also equipped other health centres in different parts of the state.
He also called on the committee to invest in providing educational institutions destroyed by insurgents with the necessary infrastructure, submitting that, “deficit in infrastructure that are key to development and investments must be made to reverse the negative effects of the insurgency on this sector.”
Governor Abubakar said parts of the states in the North-East needed to be opened with roads in order to provide access to farm produce cultivated by rural farmers, which he noted, would reduce rural-urban migration.
He pointed out that economic empowerment of the youth and women, who form the largest population of the region, had to be pursued “if we hope to stamp out insurgency in the region.”
The governor, who observed that successes recorded by the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2015 elections brought about the defeat of Boko Haram insurgency which “under the previous administration appeared to be hopeless,” commended President Muhammadu Buhari for achieving that feat in less than two years, even as he announced the provision of office accommodation, official car and project vehicles to the zonal office of the PCNI.
The governor expressed happiness that the presidential committee has started showing action, saying for meaningful results to be achieved by the committee, much needed to be done, particularly by getting the acceptance and support of all stakeholders, especially the political leadership of the region.
Speaking earlier, Alhaji Tumsah explained that the committee was the apex body constituted to coordinate oversight strategies of the various intervention programmes of the “Buhari plan which gives road map for rehabilitation, resettlement and economic recovery” in the North-East.
Tumsah, who noted that “Bauchi has done well to reduce the economic and social hardships of the IDPs,” said the committee was in Bauchi to understand the plans of the state so as to “key in to ensure faster economic recovery” of those most devastated by the insurgency and to assess Bauchi State government’s efforts at resettling the internally displaced persons who trooped to the state with the Boko Haram insurgency.
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