Roots

I told Alex and Freya on Monday evening that we were heading to the UK – the first time we’ve been back since arriving here at the end of January and both were incredibly excited. On Tuesday morning, I found their little suitcases had been packed and were waiting outside their bedroom door. I haven’t yet inspected the contents, but Alex informs me that his contains ‘cars, ribbons, a purse with some money in it and some clothes’. Freya is making do with ‘dresses and some big girls pants’. I may do a little surreptitious re-packing before we depart.
I'm actually feeling quite reluctant to leave Abuja, even temporarily.

This past 3 weeks has been fantastic for me. In some ways this is rather odd - when we returned from Ghana I was feeling incredibly apprehensive about being back in Abuja in the wake of the Nyanya bombings. There has been more awful violence – with recent bombings in Kano and Jos being a very worrying development. Incidents like this are obviously unsettling, and there have been several moments over the past month, since the first Nyanya bombing, when I have seriously thought that I'd like to pack my bags and return home for good. But, bizarrely, over this past week I have felt more and more certain that being here is the right thing to do. It has probably helped that I've been frantically busy organising a training workshop for the research project I'm working on at the British Council, but the more time I spend here the more I feel grounded I feel. I absolutely love my colleagues - it feels similar in that respect to working in the British Council office in Tehran, where I made some wonderful Iranian friends - and I feel I am learning as much about Nigeria by simply sitting at a desk listening to office banter (which is on another scale here; a full-on shouting match over the correct way to file an invoice is instantly forgotten when someone cracks a joke two minutes later) as I do by reading the newspapers or listening to the radio. I was also recently reminded by a friend that we are all here in Abuja for a reason and that it is important to try to put down roots and embrace the opportunities that are offered here, however long or short our stay in Nigeria might be. This really resonated with me: the opportunity to undertake research here in Nigeria is rare and I’m also incredibly lucky to be working with some remarkable people at a publishing company here as part of my PhD research, which is an opportunity I couldn’t possibly hope for if we were based in the UK. So I'm now very conscious of not wanting to wish my time here away.


In the past couple of weeks I’ve come to accept that Nigeria is a strange and fascinating place and, although life here can be frustrating and depressing at times, it is also quirky and funny and energizing. I can’t think of many other countries in which a trip to the Federal Inland Revenue Service office could be so entertaining and exasperating in equal measure. I made the trip downtown to the FIRS office today and did eventually obtain the Tax Identification Number I required, but only after a thirty minute wait (because the member of staff I needed to talk to couldn’t be located) and a prolonged, but good-humoured, discussion with several members of staff about why I wasn’t prepared to persuade any of my British friends to come over to Nigeria to become second wives. As I left, brandishing my TIN, I was – somewhat predictably - asked by the security guard at reception if I had anything for her. I offered her a smile and my best wishes for a happy afternoon, which she seemed to find hilarious. And as we drove back, we passed the ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ demonstration at the Unity Foundation, where activists continue to protest every day at 3pm, a sombre reminder of the hopelessness of the situation in Borno state. And then I asked my driver, who I knew came from Jos, if any of his relatives had been affected by the bomb yesterday. Very sadly, he related that his aunt, a widow, who works in the laundry at the Jos University teaching hospital, has been caught up in the blast. She has had one leg amputated, her left hand is badly damaged and her other leg requires serious attention. What a crazy, mixed-up, fascinating and unfathomable place this is. 
But it's 10.30pm and we're being picked up at 5am tomorrow to catch our flight.

So I’d better stop musing on the paradoxical and enigmatic nature of life in Nigeria and go and check what Alex and Freya have actually put in those suitcases of theirs…


More in a month.

Nigeria hysteria

So Nigeria is top of the news agenda. In addition to the unprecedented level of interest in the Chibok schoolgirls, another 8 girls were reported abducted in Warabe yesterday and 300 killed in an attack in the town on Gamboru Ngala, on Nigeria's border with Cameroon. This level of violence is not unusual in Nigeria. What is unusual is the international media attention it is starting to attract. Perhaps the fact that the World Economic Forum is taking place this week means that more journalists than usual are in town and Abuja has certainly been in the spotlight since the recent bombings in Nyanya, but there still seems to be little recognition that these attacks and kidnappings have become regular occurrences in the northeast, even if not on this scale.

Our weekend papers reflect violence and brutality on almost every page. Recent articles in The Weekly Trust and The Sunday Trust include '120 killed in Kaura (Kaduna state)'; '100 gunned down by bandits in a Katsina village'; 'Gunmen kill 15 in renewed Taraba attacks'; 'Girls' school attacked in Bauchi'; Is Nasarawa the North's new war zone?'; 'Teacher rapes, impregnates 12 year old girl'. In a country this populous, and with such security issues, the level of brutality required for a crime - be it as a result of terrorism, tribal and ethnic conflict, or domestic violence - to even be reported in the paper is such that there are times when I literally cannot bring myself to read the papers. And of course the victims of the violence are not faceless; each of them leaves behind a grieving family and community. This was brought home to me when we returned from our recent trip to Ghana and I asked our steward how her Easter had been. 'Fine, ma, thank you, except I had a little problem'. It turns out that the 'little problem' she had encountered was the fact that her husband's elder brother had been stabbed to death whilst driving home in Nasarawa. He leaves behind a wife who is 5 months pregnant and a 2 year old girl. Such, it seems, is life in Nigeria. 

In contrast to the media furore, Abuja itself was eerily quiet today. I dropped Simon off at the office this morning and encountered almost no traffic at all. The road down to the Hilton near the British Council roundabout was blocked by a massive police lorry. All schools and public offices were closed at the behest of the government, which has decided that the best way to control the terrorist threat Boko Haram pose here is to totally shutdown the city. Tensions levels are very high, particularly since the second Nyanya bombing on May 1st. Everyone knows someone who has been affected: the uncle of one of our guards was killed; a member of our church lost a colleague; the brother of a co-worker narrowly escaped death, fleeing with 'his clothes shredded like the Incredible Hulk'. I must admit I have felt nervous dropping Alex at school for the past couple of weeks and the hysterical reaction of parents to a kidnapping scare at a private school in Nyanya (which turned out to be just a plain old armed robbery) seemed to me completely understandable.

Foreign governments have reacted to the furore over the Chibok schoolgirls by sending in teams of 'international experts' to discuss how to retrieve the students. This may reassure their domestic constituents but dispatching a team of experts from the UK or the States is unlikely to make a difference, particularly at this late stage.  International governments already have large presences on the ground in Abuja and the offer to assist the Nigerian government is an open one. If the Nigerian government wishes to receive support, they only need accept some of the many offers of help that have already been extended. It is easy enough for the first lady to tweet a photo of herself with a long face holding a 'Bring Back Our Girls' banner, and there is no doubt that the global media attention has increased pressure on the Nigerian government to do something about the issue, but this does nothing to address the root of the problem. This doesn't mean we should stop pressuring the Nigerian government to do everything they can to search for the kidnapped girls, but mounting a belated attempt to rescue them will not prevent the next round of abductions or the next school massacre.

What will make the difference is the ongoing programme work in capacity building (governance, transparency and accountability, health services, teacher training) in many parts of Nigeria, but particularly the north, designed to tackle some of the fundamental causes of instability - poverty, lack of education, lack of employment opportunities - which lead to violence and unrest. Many of these programmes are funded by international governments and agencies, including DFID, whose project budget for Nigeria for 2014-15 is £210m, its third biggest country spend (after Ethiopia and Pakistan). The DFID-funded Nigeria Stability and Reconciliation Programme has a particular and long-term focus on reducing violence against women and girls. There are also a large number of very active civil society organisations, established and staffed by Nigerians, which are doing inspiring work. I met last week with the director of an NGO based in Jos called the Reconciliation and Trainers Africa, which has established a network of 240 (Nigerian) 'peace advocates' who volunteer their time to mediate on community and religious disputes. It is worth noting that the director was a recipient of an Foreign Office-funded Chevening Scholarship, which he used to study for a MA at the Institute of Education in London, focusing his studies on acquiring tools in training and conflict resolution which he has put to use upon his return to Nigeria.

Admittedly, engagement with the Nigerian government is not easy on a number of levels. Work is challenging here. Trying to implement a programme in a country where accountability is almost non-existent in certain sectors is problematic to say the least (DFID don't put any money through the government channels due to the levels of corruption here). However, the solution is not solely a question of aid funding. If the Nigerian government actually spent the amount of money on education that is budgeted for the sector, the situation would be considerably ameliorated. Instead, money is siphoned off at all levels: scholarships meant for impoverished schoolgirls are instead given out to friends and relatives of officials; teachers' salaries are not paid, leading them to vacate classrooms in order to seek employment elsewhere; exams are meaningless when results can be bought. At the recent NESG convention on education, which I attended in March, there was an open recognition amongst delegates (high-ranking government officials at state and federal level, ministers, education advisors, teachers) that endemic corruption has led to a collapse of the education system, yet the conference closed with very little prospect of change. There was even recognition that 'change begins with me' and that officials and educationalists should take personal responsibility for change in their communities, yet once a culture of corruption has become so entrenched, it becomes almost impossible to imagine how one can begin to right it. The most telling moment of the conference was when the delegates were asked how many of them had attended government schools. Almost everyone indicated they had done so. When asked how many of the attendees had sent their own children to a government school, only two people in a room of 500 raised their hand. When a system is broken, the easiest thing is to opt out. There is no accountability, no sense of personal responsibility, no personal investment in the nation (hence the inability of Nigerians to find anything to celebrate at the nation's Centenary celebrations).

Gordon Brown, attending the WEF by virtue of his role as the UN Special Envoy on Global Education, announced today the launch of the 'Safe Schools initiative', funded in large part by Nigerian business magnate, Aliko Dangote, Africa's richest man. (I particularly enjoyed the This Day news article about the launch, which referred to US Secretary of State John Terry - I knew there was speculation about his retirement from Chelsea FC but hadn't realised he had taken up a new role in the US administration so quickly). This strikes me as exactly the sort of long-term commitment that will make an impact and will provide practical support to protect both girls and boys who wish to receive an education. The pilot project will be launched in 500 schools in northern Nigeria and will help to build community security groups - involving students, teachers, parents, police and community leaders - to promote 'safe zones' for education. There is a recognition of the severity of the insecurity and a pragmatic response designed to bolster the physical safety of the institutions of learning:

"In the longer-term, the initiative will focus on bolstering the physical protection of schools, providing school guards and police in partnership with Nigerian authorities, training staff as school safety officers, providing communications tools and school counselors. The initiative will also work to help schools create school security plans and work with the government to develop a rapid response system so that even when faced with attacks, response units are set up to quickly repaired or rebuilt, and destroyed education material is replaced."

This time next week, another story will be top of the news agenda, the journalists will have returned home and, unfortunately, it is likely that the schoolgirls will still be missing. But ongoing work in stability-building and reconciliation, such as the programmes run by RETA and NRSP, will continue their excellent work, away from the spotlight and with no fuss.

But the real breakthrough will be if this increased international focus and domestic pressure on Nigeria forces the government to change its behaviour, to act as a serious country and take responsibility for its own failings. Nigerians need their own government to become accountable. Until that happens, very little will change.