Six years ago, I was here several times. As I journeyed through this path this period, I saw the man on top of his donkey with his hoe and cutlass heading for the farm. I saw another man driving the bulls to the grassland to fend.
Yet, by the roadside along the villages were men displaying their agricultural produce for sale and the Fulani girls with their calabash of cow milk on their heads, looking for customers.
As you move along, there are heaps of firewood cut and arranged in various sizes for willing buyers passing along. So is the fleet of trucks, some rickety and polluting the air with exhaust, conveying mass of firewood heading from the villages to Maiduguri, the state capital, for the market.
Day and night, Maiduguri – Damboa-Biu road was and is one of the commercial nerve centres of Borno, especially on transportation business. Besides, the road leads to Adamawa, Gombe and Bauchi states at various points and veered to other towns and villages in Borno. Prominent among such towns is Chibok.
Then suddenly, this economic nerve centre or route of the people became the forbidden fruit for the past six years following the bloody assault of Boko Haram insurgency. It became a no-go area and one of the battle ground for the soul of Borno.
there is need to consider the merger of some of the villages and rural settlements for effective monitoring, development, and security implication. Such merger should take cognisance of the socio-cultural background of the affected communities
However, following the decimation of the insurgency, the military in 2016 removed the red card on the road for the green one and the travelers were free to travel but on a condition that such journey would be in group and under military escort.
To do the contrary is at one’s peril. The pioneer or early travelers on the road, when reopened, told of horror stories and happenings on the road. There were reports of skeletons and carcass of human beings spread over places and heaps of cartridges of used bullets everywhere.
There were also reports of decomposing bodies of men and animals littering places. The journey under the military escort was always characterised with sporadic shootings all through between Maiduguri and Damboa town, the area said to be the den of the prowling insurgents.
Eyes were always wide opened and ears to the ground until people are left off the hook on getting to Damboa to continue their onward journey. This was the status of things when on January 6, 2017, I decided, for compelling reasons, to put my life on line to travel on this dreaded route to Numan in Adamawa state.
Being now the Alice in the wonderland, in the reopened road, I was very attentive to what I should expect on the journey. I was told to get to the motor park early enough to board one of the earliest vehicles. This I did.
Luckily, I got the first Sienna bus going to Jalingo in Taraba State via Numan. As fate would have it, I was in company of eight travelers with two soldiers inclusive. We took off from the park by 7.am to Molai, the outskirt of Maiduguri to join other vehicles on the same route.
On getting to Molai, we met dozens of other vehicles already ahead of us. However, the soldiers in our company broke the protocol as they ordered our driver to move ahead regardless of the queue.
I might not have liked it, but I wouldn’t like to be behind either in an entourage I learnt could be up to 4000 vehicles at ago. At exactly 10am, the military escort arrived and we took off with our vehicle in fourth position.
Driving on a road that had long been abandoned and in utter state of disrepair, my eyes feasted on the incredible. I saw mass destruction of public and private property. I saw local residential buildings reduced to rubbles.
Even the buildings standing are caricatures of themselves or museum pieces as they bore testimony of countless bullet holes. No living creature was visible. The inhabitants of this one-time bubbling environment have disappeared.
In about four places along the route of about 150 kilometers were military posts, but not a single soul of local population was visible.
As we arrived Damboa town, the terminal point of the military escort, we were left to fend our way for the onward journey to respective destinations. Then thoughts enveloped my mind, meditation cropped in and questions came rattling. What an orgy of destruction and where have the people gone?
Will they ever return with the magnitude of ruins in focus? No doubt, home is always home and no matter the trepidation, people would always prefer their home to somewhere else, regardless of the comfort of the latter. But do the affected state governments, federal government and the international donor community have the financial muscle and expertise to bring back to its original formation the destroyed areas without compromising other competing interests?
This is particularly instructive of Borno where almost 23 of the 27 local government council areas were ruined. Indeed, this is a herculean task if not near impossible. For the over two and half millions internally displaced persons to be adequately resettled for meaningful life and destroyed infrastructure rebuilt, there is need to have another look at the present Rehabilitation, Reconstruction and Resettlement Programme of the government for possible adjustment.
For example, there is need to consider the merger of some of the villages and rural settlements for effective monitoring, development, and security implication. Such merger should take cognisance of the sociocultural background of the affected communities.
A measure of this natural and other considered integration process will not only reduce cost and time frame, but will accelerate and motivate the IDPs’ willingness to go back home.
