You may have seen the photo that appeared in the papers last Thursday; and you may have asked yourself, in the words of Talking Heads, what is he doing there; and you may ask yourself — why are the British military tackling pirates off west Africa? And you may ask yourself why is Britain so keen to partner with Nigeria, and to help and invest in Nigeria, and to build up Britain’s trading links with Nigeria, when there are so many other immediate calls on the public purse?
Do you have such spasms of cynicism, when you see public servants enjoying themselves overseas? If so, let me take you to a hospital ward in the north-eastern Nigerian town of Maiduguri. Last Wednesday, the British Development Secretary Priti Patel and I became the first western politicians to go there since it was almost lost to the nihilistic terrorists of Boko Haram in 2014. Though the town itself is now thought to be safe enough, the maniacs infest the scrub and forest of the surrounding countryside; still shooting, still bombing — often coaxing girls as young as ten or 11 to put on a suicide vest, cruelly deceiving them about what will happen when they activate the charge.
The popular fear-levels are still so high that two million people are displaced in an area considerably larger than Wales. The burnt-out villages are still deserted; the refugee camps are still vast and unsanitary and every week the mutilated victims are taken to the hospital wards. We talked to an old boy — a “baba” — shot by an AK-47 bullet that somehow entered his jaw and exited his shoulder. “Who did it?” we asked. “Boko Haram,” he gasped. We talked to a young mother, her leg in a cast from a bomb blast, her naked baby clinging to her back.
Most moving of all was a young man called Anwal, 26, whose left arm had been blown off at the shoulder. He spoke with a courage and wisdom that was almost unbearable. He wanted only two things, he said: To be able to go back into full-time university education, and for the government of Nigeria to begin a dialogue with Boko Haram. That objective, alas, is proving agonisingly hard. This is a 3,000-strong group with an ideology that is almost dementedly negative. They seem to reject all western culture and civilisation (“boko” is a corruption of “book” and “haram” means forbidden); but it is not easy to say what they are for. They seem to have no political agenda — except the sick thrill of shooting and killing.
It would simply not be true to say — as the Nigerian military has sometimes claimed — that they have been defeated. But they have been certainly pushed back. Their territory has been very substantially reduced. I believe you would be very proud to see the help Britain is giving, every day, not just in funding medical treatment, but in helping those brave Nigerians in their struggle. We met British military personnel who have helped to train 28,000 Nigerian troops. We saw how British aid is being used to bring hundreds of infants back from the brink of death.
It is very shocking to hold an 18-month-old baby and see that his arms are as wizened and bony as an 80-year-old’s. Even if you do not accept the moral imperative to help — as I do — there is the simple argument from national British self-interest. For all sorts of good reasons, we need a Nigeria that is strong, and stable, and economically successful.
Look at these tracts of ungoverned space created by Boko Haram, and you see the same pustulent phenomenon that has erupted on the face of Iraq, Syria and Libya: An ecosystem of terror — part of a mutually contaminating network that exports arms and money and terrorists, and which is all in the grip of the same hate-filled ideology. The horrors of Boko Haram are connected with the chaos in Mali and Niger, and the anarchy in large parts of Libya — and all of it helping to drive the migration crisis that has affected western Europe.
Nigeria is currently stuck in a vicious circle: The peril of Boko Haram has compounded the fall in oil price to damage the country’s economic prosperity; and without strong economic growth — spread between the south and the traditionally less-favoured north — there is less chance of tackling the poverty and alienation that are the root causes of Boko Haram. But if this extraordinary country can get out of this trap, with British help, then the potential of Nigeria is boundless. There is already stupendous wealth among the “ogas” or business moguls of Lagos. It will not be long before the Nigerian middle class is bigger than the United Kingdom’s population.
This is the powerhouse of the African economy, vying with South Africa for the number one spot. We met entrepreneurs of all kinds: In technology, banking, fashion, and a woman who had invented a revolutionary fishcake that lasts six months on the shelf. All of them were yearning for British partners and investment. And it was easy to see how Nigeria — set to be 400 million people by 2050 — could be a truly vast market for British goods and services. Lagos is a megacity of 22 million; but the roads are paralysed without a tube network — a gaping opportunity for British construction firms and consultants in a country where many of the elite have already used a Transport for London Oystercard. The opportunity is there because the links are there. Now is the time to strengthen economic links with Nigeria, with new trade deals and new projects. That process, of reinventing half-forgotten friendships, for mutual benefit, will be one of the joys of the Global Britain project.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London, 2017
