In retelling the Boko Haram story, Bole doesn’t get many mentions. Yet, it is in this serene, rural Adamawa community that the seeds of an agrarian revolution, which could one day become a global model for managing internally displaced populations, are being sown.
Internally displaced refugees began to stream into Bole in Yola South Local Government Area from neighboring Borno and Yobe states early in 2014 as Boko Haram sacked village after village.
They arrived in their new host communities hungry, confused, dispossessed, and hopeless. Their country had abandoned them and they were left on their own. Their husbands had either been slain (some wives witnessed the horrendous incidents) or were missing, their grown up sons killed or conscripted by the insurgents to fight and die, and their daughters taken away to become sex slaves.
In the refugee camp, religious and sectarian identities are irrelevant. Suffering is the common denominator that unites Muslims and Christians, Catholics with Pentecostals, and Sunni with Shi’a. Under the scorching Yola sun, children in rags played unmindfully in the open sandy field, flies swarming over their ringworm-infested scalps like angry drones.
It is in this unlikely setting that hope is reborn. Today the internally displaced people (IDPs) in Bole have transformed the story from one of despondency to self-sufficiency, from dependence on handouts to growing their own food and having surplus to sell for their upkeep.
The IDPs’ road to food security is a classic case of how a determined people can take an offered opportunity–even in the direst of circumstances–to change their own destiny. The inspiration for change followed a compassionate visit of the American University of Nigeria-Adamawa Peace Initiative (AUN-API) team in May 2014, led by AUN President, Dr. Margee Ensign. During the visit, the team promised to come up with a program to give them a better life. The large number of children among the refugees particularly touched President Ensign. The village Head of Bole, Alhaji Abdul-Mumuni Abubakar, who is a prominent AUN-API leader, raised the plight the refugees at every API meeting. He said that if AUN-API would provide seeds and school feeds, he would settle them on his land. What a novel solution to a pressing human problem.
Thinking strategically, AUN-API concluded that as more IDPs fled the areas overrun by Boko Haram, the refugee crisis would only get worse, unless a solution like this was implemented.
The supplies brought to the IDP’s included grains, clothing, sanitary wares, and petty cash. This continued for weeks and months. The group repeatedly visited the village and always returned with more supplies. AUN students, alumnus, staff and faculty members– expatriate and Nigerian–took turns to go to Bole to serve breadlines under Dr. Ensign’s leadership. Then Vice President of AUN Schools & Educational Program, Ms. Krista McKee, took young children to the hospital for medical care and raised funds for these efforts. AUN Faculty and staff members contributed from their pockets sufficient funds to send the refugee children back to school.
The AUN-API food security strategy aims to encourage the IDPs, who are mainly farmers, to return to the land and grow their own food. The strategy is a win-win for the IDPs, their host community, and the larger society. Their new food security removes the burden of relying on their already overstretched hosts for their food. As farmers, the IDPs are glad to be reunited with the soil. The surplus they sold in the market brought in much needed income and topped the neighborhood’s breadbasket.
During a visit of the Swiss Ambassador to AUN, the Swiss government offered technical support in improving the farmers’ skills for a sustainable environment. This technique discourages the use of inorganic manure to increase soil fertility, teaches the farmers how to do composting, use environment-friendly machinery so as not to disturb the soil structure, and encourages agroforestry and dry-season farming with the use of the newly introduced pedal irrigation pump.
The major focus of the AUN-API Bole Food Security initiative is to help farmers improve on their current farming techniques and engage those from neighboring communities in all-season farming. This it is doing by providing technical support, seed crops, and necessary farm tools.
A staff member of AUN’s sustainability unit, Mr. Rotimi Ogundijo, explained that the criteria for selecting the beneficiaries include families that are up to eight in number. The scheme covers 100 farming families. Bole community on its part supported the initiative by providing at least half a hectare of arable farmland to each family.
The Secretary to the Bole Village Head, Mohammed Yahya, said, “The farmland allocation is based on what crops the farmers decide to plant; most of them are looking for a safer place to stay. Many have no plans to return to their original homes.” Some of the crops distributed among the IDPs include maize, groundnut, rice, and beans–altogether 3,000 kilos of seeds. Field officers from the American University of Nigeria monitor the entire operation, from the seed selection to land preparation, planting, introduction of organic manure, cultivation, weeding, harvesting, and packaging the surplus for sale.
As part of technical support from AUN to the IDPs in Bole, in May 2015 the University collaborated with the Environmental Care Foundation, a non-governmental organisation, to introduce a pedal irrigation pump, to enable farmers to engage in dry-season farming. The pedal pump, an initiative of a Nairobi-based social enterprise KickStart, has proven successful for a decade and is known to boost small-scale farm production.
Ogundijo explained that water shortage during dry season cuts down food production, and the farmers complained of the high cost of petrol to run the regular motorised water pumps. However, the KickStart pedal pump makes it easy for farmers to plant all the year round, with increase in yields and no petrol costs.
The farmers have been grouped into cooperatives to enhance accountability and equal sharing of farm inputs.
One major lesson of the AUN-API food security model, which is transforming lives among the Bole IDPs, is the power and reach of local organisations working for peace and development in the community.
Presenting the AUN-API model to a session of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Geneva, Switzerland, on July 3, Dr. Ensign, who led a three-member AUN-API delegation, said local people not only have a greater understanding of their culture, but they also have a better ability to gather information, and respond to rapidly changing conditions.
“We know our community and we are in a unique position to bring diverse resources together to find and implement solutions to crises, prevent our youth from succumbing to the temptation to join extremist organisations, and bring stability to the region. Our collaborative model works, and we believe that governments, international NGOs, and other organisations working in regions of conflict should pre-identify local peace groups such as ours, and evaluate and use these local networks to implement assistance,” concluded Dr. Ensign.
Even as Maiduguri, Sambisa, and Chibok continue to dominate the headlines as the epicenter of Boko Haram violence, Bole adds an extraordinary story of the triumph of the human spirit over adversity.
. Omorogbe Omorogiuwa and Nelly Ating contributed this piece from Yola, Adamawa State, North East Nigeria.