Borno State lost 20,000 citizens and suffered property damage worth $5.9bn [N1.9 trillion at the current parallel market exchange rate of N324 to a dollar in the hands of Boko Haram insurgents in the last seven years, according to a Preliminary Validation by World Bank officials of a Post Insurgency Recovery and Peace Building Assessment report.
This represents an estimate of the value of public and private property damaged by the insurgents’ war in the state’s 27 local government areas.
The assessment report presented by Borno State Government to the World Bank for validation, exclusively obtained by Daily Trust, indicates that out of 3,232,308 private houses in the state, 956,453 or 30 percent were destroyed by insurgents. Worst hit is Mobbar local government where out of 150,585 private houses, 101,085 houses were destroyed.
Abadam, Guzamala, Bama and Gwoza followed in the scale of destruction. More than 80 percent of the houses in Bama local government were destroyed.
The report also found that 5,335 classrooms and other school buildings were destroyed in primary, secondary schools and two tertiary institutions.
Bama was worst hit with 519 classrooms destroyed in 92 schools while Gwoza followed with 420 classrooms affected in 70 schools.
School buildings were destroyed in 24 of the 27 local governments. Bayo, Shani and Kwaya Kusar LGAs in the state’s Southern parts were the only ones spared. 512 primary schools, 38 secondary schools and two tertiary institutions, namely Umar Ibn El-Kanemi College of Education, Science and Technology, Bama and College of Business and Management Studies, Konduga were destroyed by the insurgents.
The report also showed that 201 health centres, mostly primary healthcare clinics, dispensaries and some General Hospitals were affected damaged.
Also, Boko Haram destroyed 1,630 water sources including motorized boreholes, hand pumps, solar powered boreholes and facilities for piped water schemes.
The report also shows that 665 municipal buildings
comprising ministry and LGA buildings, prisons, police stations and electric offices were destroyed by the insurgents. Of the number, there were 436 LGA buildings, 104 Ministry buildings, 76 police stations, 35 electric offices and 14 prison buildings in 24 local government areas.
Also destroyed by Boko Haram were 726 distribution substations of 11 KV/415V and distribution lines of 415-230 V in the 27 LGAs. Parks, game reserves, forest reserves, grazing reserves, green wall projects, orchards, ponds, river basins and lakes were either poisoned or bombed in 16 local government areas. In addition, 470,000 livestock were either killed or stolen.
Apart from the 20,000 citizens killed, majority of the two million persons are internally displaced as well as thousands of others who took refuge in neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon Republics are from Borno State.
The Post Insurgency Recovery and Peace Building Assessment is an intervention program for the Northeast initiated by the World Bank, European Union and the United Nations through collaboration with the Federal Government as well as Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Gombe, Bauchi and Taraba state governments.
The federal and the six state governments are expected to provide counterpart funds to demonstrate commitment as addition to a yet to be named amount to be provided by the World Bank.
The World Bank had identified focal persons for each of the six States and provided a template for each State to generate verifiable data with focus on education, healthcare, water and sanitation, private housing, municipal buildings (public office buildings), energy, environment, transport, economy, private enterprise, internally displaced persons, social protection, citizens engagement and civil society participation.
Each state worked for weeks, assessing affected communities and came up with data which the World Bank accepted after series of observations that were strict in adherence to the “Bank’s template which is very thorough,” Daily Trust was told. Report by each state is one of the key conditions set by the Bank for its intervention.
Although World Bank is yet to make official pronouncement because its validation of all submissions is yet to be finalized, Daily Trust learnt that the Borno State Government through its Ministry of Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Resettlement submitted its Post Insurgency Recovery and Peace Building Assessment Report recently which has been accepted by the World Bank after thorough observations. Officials of the Borno State Government and Federal Governments had earlier estimated the state’s losses at seven billion dollars.
However, after exhaustive preliminary validation by the World Bank it came up with a figure of $5.9 billion.
The amount is what is required to rebuild affected communities in Borno to pre-conflict standards, Daily Trust learnt.
On Wednesday last week, Vice President of the World Bank for Africa Makhtar Diop met with Governors Kashim Shettima of Borno, Hassan Dankwambo of Gombe, Mohammed Abubakar of Bauchi and Deputy Governor of Yobe Abubakar Danlami Ali at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel in Abuja to discuss the assessment reports. Also at the meeting was Special Assistant to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on IDPs, Dr Mariam Masha.
Source: Daily Trust
