Alhaji Tijjani Tumsah, Vice Chairman of the Presidential Committee on the North-East Initiative (PCNI), says it may take a minimum of 10 years before appreciable progress can be made in rebuilding the Northeast following Boko Haram attacks.

At a forum with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Abuja, Tumsah said that the Boko Haram crisis was horrific and led to the loss of thousands of lives and destruction of property worth over US$9 billion.

According to Tumsah, the challenges in the region are multi-sectoral, and rebuilding a better and safer Northeast requires a specialised approach.

“The issues in the Northeast are long-term, in my opinion it would take a minimum of 10 years before appreciable progress is made and people are able to return to normalcy," he said, adding that the three-year time frame given to the committee was in the first instance.

He said that the committee had engaged with the private sector on a variety of issues, including fund raising, and that those approached had indicated interest to provide quite a bit of the resources for the engagement.

“The physical nature of the intervention will begin to become more obvious before the year runs out.

“For now we are set, we have the framework for intervention and strategy. We have all the partners on the same page and now there will be less acrimony and it would become obvious to the whole Nigerians.

“The document synthesises all these studies and distills them into programmes that are implementable to the situation in the Northeast,” Tumsah further disclosed.

He said that in less than a year, the committee had recorded a huge success in achieving its three ‘Rs’ mandate of reconstruction, rehabilitation and rebuilding the Northeast.

He explained that although a lot of people would recount the success of rebuilding the region in building physical structures but it goes beyond that, as a lot is needed to be tackled before putting up structures.

The Vice Chairman said that to carry out its task effectively, the PCNI designed and adopted a strategic framework of action which is the ‘Buhari Plan,’ a blueprint to guide its intervention for success.

Tumsah said that the Buhari Plan contains a holistic approach to addressing the root causes of the insurgency, which afterwards could also be a global module for post conflict and economic recovery development.

He said that the Buhari Plan is a five-year time framework which is divided into three execution components of immediate, intermediate and long-term.

Tumsah said that the areas of priority under the plan included a boost in humanitarian assistance, improved health care, resumption and strengthening of agricultural production, education transformation by reconstructing schools, recruiting and training teachers.

He said that under the Buhari Plan, over 21,000 projects have been listed for implementation by Ministries, Departments and Agencies, state governments, development partners, international and local Non-Government Organisations.

NAN reports that the PCNI was inaugurated by President Muhammadu Buhari last October 26, with a three-year time frame to recover and rebuild a better and safer Northeast.

The President appointed Lt. General Theoplilius Danjuma (rtd.) as Chairman of the committee.

Membership were drawn from the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons (NCFRMI), the six Northeast states, Office of the National Security Adviser, relevant MDAs and UN agencies, international organisations and NGOs, local NGOs, and the Victims Support Fund (VSF), among others. (NAN)

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