A Marshall plan for North-East Nigeria

North-Eastern Nigeria, which is currently under the shadow of insurgency, is a vast region with great potential that however still remains the poorest part of Nigeria.

The North East, base of the murderous Islamist group Boko Haram, had 69.1 percent and 76.3 percent absolute and relative poverty levels, respectively, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Poverty Profile Report.

While Northern Nigeria’s poverty rate as a whole is above 70 percent – double that in the South. The North East has been particularly hit hard as the lack of economic opportunities in the region drives people into the arm of radical Islamism, leading to a vicious cycle of poverty and underdevelopment.

The problem is now being complicated by the insidious targeting of education by the insurgents, an example of which is the Chibok kidnappings.

Nigeria’s Southern states have higher secondary school attendance rates than the Northern states. The North-eastern states (Bauchi, Taraba, Yobe and Borno) fare poorly, with school attendance rates of less than 10 percent, according to the most recent NBS data.

It is evident that a long-term plan must be marshalled out for the region to bring it up to par with the rest of Nigeria, and prevent it from being a drag on the entire country.

This is perhaps where the United States Marshall plan for Europe, comes in, a model that should be copied by Nigeria.

Marshall Plan, formally European Recovery Programme (April 1948 – December 1951), was a US-sponsored programme designed to rehabilitate the economies of 17 Western and Southern European countries – post-World War 2 – in order to create stable conditions in which democratic institutions could survive.

The United States feared that the poverty, unemployment, and dislocation of the post-World War 2 period were reinforcing the appeal of communist parties to voters in Western Europe.

Under Paul G. Hoffman, the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), a specially created bureau, distributed over the next four years some $13 billion worth of economic aid, helping to restore industrial and agricultural production, establish financial stability, and expand trade.

Nigeria should seriously consider scrapping the corrupt and unsustainable fuel subsidies, and use part of the proceeds to finance the North-East Marshall plan.

The subsidies cost N1 trillion ($6.25bn) in 2013, and the Federal Government could potentially channel N2 trillion ($13bn) over a four-year period, to the North East, from its 50 percent share of any funds received as part of the removal of fuel subsidies.

Evidently, the aim must be to appropriate what would be a huge amount of money, with minimum bureaucracy and corruption, for maximum efficiency and impact.

While the details of these can be worked out later, the government at the centre must first make the tough political decision to establish such a marshal plan for the much blighted region.