By Adagbo Onoja.

As the Coordinator of the “National Conference on Community Resilience to Boko Haram Insurgency”, Professor Jibrin Ibrahim must have developed a certain intellectual intimacy with the data and dynamics of resilience as to be sensitive to bringing all angles to it and avoid a celebratory discourse of the concept. This is the sort of conclusion one is compelled to reach from listening to him and from reading his last synthesis of the research project he superintended, (See “The Resilience of Nigerians”, Daily Trust, May 12^th, 2017). As one of the most formidable social scientists in Nigeria today; as one with ex-students spread all over the place; as a columnist and with the prospects of him presiding over the final write-up of the research report, his current engagement with resilience represents a frightening development. It cannot be less in the light of the claim, and belief even, for instance, that Ulrich Beck’s World Risk Society argument is the real paradigm which grounded most recent security practices, particularly in counter-terrorism and Homeland Security. The implication is that Jibo (as he is more popularly known) could end up writing security but from an indigestible mix of subdued nationalism and ‘compassionate’ neoliberalism. It is thus considered important to attempt to tame this temptation before he ends up singing a reality into being through discourse but a reality that would be incongruent with the shared vision of Nigeria that has remained unifying for most activists of the 1980s to date.

Even if taken at the level of the headline alone, Jibo’s column says a lot about his conception of resilience: it is there, the research discovered it and here we are. In other words, Jibo argues that Nigerians have sufficient adaptive skills, inherent in them or acquired in the face of threats. He lists them and the constraints that inhibited their full flight in the confrontation with Boko Haram in the north east. In doing so in the piece, Jibo did not notice when he slipped from analysis to propaganda at the point he wrote of the “remarkable capacity of the people to develop resilience and move on with their lives in spite of adversity”. It is a claim he took seriously enough as to try to bring it down to earth in the assertion towards the end of the piece about how more devastating Boko Haram would have been but for the exploitation of local initiatives in resilience.

The first problem with this representation of the dynamics of resilience to Boko Haram is the applicability of the idea of communities that have moved on or out of entrapment in the assemblage of trauma that Boko Haram has occasioned in the north east region and Nigeria. Many would challenge such a claim with the subsisting degree of human vegetation in IDP camps, the threat of famine, the human waste in weekly bomb blasts in and around Maiduguri, the nightmare of the atrocious practice of strapping young girls with bombs which someone somewhere would be detonating on cue, among others. And this is in spite of the military’s involvement.

But no less problematic is a concept of resilience that does not distinguish between the cultural subjectivity of the people in fighting off Boko Haram and the market discourse of security that resilience is fundamentally about. Without that distinction, resilience came off as such an innocent lexicon in Jibo’s analysis. Resilience is not so much about the culturally specific coping innovations in the face of danger in that piece but a neoliberal discourse of security that might draw on such anthropological constitution of communities or the configuration of same in favour of moving the people from fear of to anticipation and adaptation to danger, including the confidence and happiness in relying on learnt adaptive skills to provide for their own safety. So, resilience thus has to do with indoctrination about coming to grips with the ‘post-secure’ world in which “the danger is disorder”. That is the disruption in the language of resilience analysis or the ‘risk society’ argument which 9/11 has been cited as the most significant confirmation. So, from posting risks, the unthinkable or complex uncertainty as the most key building block of post 9/11 world, resilience seeks individualization of the task of turning insecurity into opportunities rather than apprehension of it. The question then is if that conscious coming to terms with insecurity as opportunity was what the study saw in the north east and north west.

It is doubtful that any communities in predominantly peasant Africa would have been manifesting such attributes when the communities in Katrina in industrialised United States of America did not. Not when it has been claims of alienation from disqualification and denial against the post-disaster management of Hurricane Katrina because “the neoliberal post recovery required survivors to become ‘entrepreneurs’ and ‘empowered consumers” who are called customers, clients and consumers rather than citizens.  One of the most detailed studies of Katrina disaster management showed the complete neoliberal take-over of the terms of managing the Katrina disaster to the point where “contracts for various services were so numerous and complex that ‘FEMA, (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) even had to hire a contractor to award contracts to contractors”.

Warisu O. Alli, Professor of International Relations at Nigeria’s University of Jos was @ the conference on resilience

Attahiru Jega, Professor of Political Science at Bayero University, Kano – Nigeria also attended

Prof Kathleen Tierney, the leading authority on resilience based at the University of Colorado has done an indicative listing of the leading drivers of resilience globally. They include The Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities Framework; The Community and Regional Resilience Institute; The Rockefeller Foundation; The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism based at the University of Maryland; The University of North Carolina’s Coastal Hazards Centre and The Centre for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorist Events. Notwithstanding the autonomy of idea and independent mindedness of intellectuals, the funding politics for these centres makes them inherently neoliberal incubation centres without them necessarily becoming supporters of neoliberal lens of the world.

The foregoing suggests the need to be careful in celebrating resilience. It is not an innocent concept. It is important to study the cultural or anthropological sensitivity or make-up of our people, their survivalist instincts in the face of rupture but carefully so in other not to fall prey to the market forces construction of resilience as a question of pushing responsibility for public safety to individuals and communities instead of probing macro structural context of risks. The truth is that our people, from the north to the south, do not have the resilience Jibo proclaims when we consider the nature of catastrophes that define the contemporary era – especially in the realm of global health, climate change, transnational terrorism and migration. How can we talk of resilience in counter-terrorism, for instance, when it is now basically a drone warfare affair? Energy would have topped the list if the United States were still an oil importing country, considering the Nixon and Carter doctrines. As things are today, one shudders to think what would happen when climate change starts manifesting around these shores. Unless magic happens and Nigeria overcomes her current confusion, the likelihood of people dying in thousands is almost a foregone conclusion. Neither our elite/political leaders nor the citizens believe in the threat from climate change, not to talk of anticipating and preparing for it. Yet, it is coming.

The study of resilience to Boko Haram stands at the threshold of breaking grounds in its promise of domesticating resilience in security studies in Nigeria, if not Africa. This is to the extent that it has enough data with which it can reconceptualise resilience as well as promote a discourse of resilience capable of reproducing itself for Nigeria’s national security, (that is to the extent that one could still talk of a national security in the age of globalisation). That way, it brings our engagement with the concept in line with Mohammed Ayoob’s critique of Emancipation paradigm of security. Contrary to Emancipation paradigm’s notion of security as freedom of the people from the constraints of the state, the US based Pakistani Political Scientist argued for positioning of the state as the definitive driver of Emancipation. His reason for saying so is that without state power, people in the ‘Third World’ cannot find their bearing in a world of power which is barren of honest brokers.

CITAD and the United States Institute of Peace which has supported the research on resilience to Boko Haram have simply accepted and even implemented Ayoob’s position, by bringing together young researchers who have also brought their research findings to the table under the gaze of some of Nigeria’s most established social scientists. So, it could be argued that everything needed for this study to make a statement on resilience from this part of the world are on the ground except Jibo’s unit of measurement, otherwise known as Jibogram.

Senior academics, discussants and researchers at the just ended “National Conference on Community Resilience to Boko Haram Insurgency” wondered if governments and leaders in Nigeria worry about certain practices which they equate with trapping the future. By trapping the future, they were referring to practices with potentials to explode in the future. One of such practices that came up in the course of comments, observations and questions across the sessions is the idea of school children wearing different sets of uniform in one school.  Participants wondered why it is important that children would be conscientised to their religious and cultural differences at such age in such a way that they can hardly outgrow. Warning that “our children are watching our steps”, some discussants expressed surprise that this happens in government owned schools where, in most cases, Christians wear a different set from Muslims. Does this worry the leaders, it was asked.

Intellectuals at a previous session of the conference

Prof Ogoh Alubo, a conference session chair

Similarly, the emergence of different markets for Christians and Muslims in some parts of the country was frowned at. So also is the emergent settlement pattern whereby Christians have their own sections and same for Muslims in many towns, cities and communities. Participants narrated the ordeal of individuals they knew who had to sell off, cheaply and quickly, the only house they managed to complete in order to relocate or risk being killed by youths of the ‘wrong’ community during violent conflicts.

Equally noted is the emergence of a parallel security system in terms of the street gating, high wall gates enveloping each house, neighborhood vigilante system, etc that mark an informal safety system as against the police and other organs that mark the formal system. In some cases, there are different District Heads for different sections of a community.

Although the items on this list emerged at different sessions at the conference, they cohere into the worry list of participants at the end of the day. The puzzle was always why the government or the leaders appear unfazed by any or all of these sorts of practices. Or always out of depth in terms of what alternatives should be the case.

But it was not one-way puzzles and no answers all the way. While no one had any explanation or answer to the cases of settlement patterns reflecting religious differences, the case of different markets was exonerated. According to contrary information, different markets in Jos, for instance, arose as a time-buying arrangement for tempers to cool, never as an official policy. “It was to create space for negotiation, to serve as a ceasefire kind of arrangement”, a participant told the conference. No one countered him on that submission.

Two other worries that got contrary analyses were why some people still believe no girls were abducted from Chibok and why is the abduction mediatised more than that of hundreds of other victims in Boko Haram series of atrocities. The second is what sense does society make from the statement of those who said that Boko Haram were freedom fighters or the tendering of apologies to Boko Haram by some three governors sometimes in the past.

While it was acknowledged that there are still people who are stuck with the conspiracy theory that abduction of the Chibok girls never happened but only something like that, organised to embarrass the government of the day, the question of media privileging of the plight of Chibok girls was related to the key features about it. According to Dr Kole Shettima, the first feature is the paradox in the failure of the idea of government it represents: government is supposed to protect everyone and here is a situation where this did not happen. The second feature is the sensitivity of the identity of the victims – they are all girls and were all students. The third is the way the abduction demonstrates the trend in the use of girls as weapons of war. “All these are situations that people cannot relate to and the media reflects that” and, hence, the demands that people do something about it as in the BBOGs campaign, it was stated.

A more comparative analogy came up in the question of people who described Boko Haram as freedom fighters ever before. What did they mean? Some discussants wanted to know what Boko Haram actually is. Is it a religious, specifically Islamicist movement or a criminal organisation involved in negative accumulation? If it is an Islamicist organisation, why does it attack mosques and kill Muslims also? Why did some scholars declare them freedom fighters when it started initially? Were they thinking it was something comparable to the IRA in Northern Ireland or even the African National Congress, (ANC) all of which started that way? Is it the case that people who made such statements now know better that Boko Haram is nothing of that sort? Questions! Questions!! And questions!!!

When Boko Haram bombed Police Headquarters in Abuja in June 2011

The Nigeria Police was not as lucky as Boko Haram. In spite of the presence of friendly and smiling police officers in uniform throughout the conference, discussants and other conferees descended on them as the case may be. Someone asked why the police collect bribe from both sides of every case. Earlier on, the celebration of Boko Haram in some communities initially when they were attacking only police and people in uniform generally was strongly cited as a bad omen. Such sense of relief that security agents were object of attack signposted pre-existing popular angst against the police and, by implication, the Nigerian State. If no such trust existed, how could there be sustainable resistance against a major disruption such as a murderous insurgency? It is hoped that the Nigerian State takes note as well as the Police Force itself.

Of equal concern was the attitude of the government in never resolving conflict because the government never goes beyond the violence phase. Once violence erupts, the government sends units of the Mobile Police or the army, in certain cases, ‘normalcy’ returns and the government forgets about the rest. Fact finding is never done, interfacing the protagonists and antagonists is never done, confidence building mechanisms are never put in place and the question of compensation is never addressed even in the most glaring cases of unfairness. So, the conflict goes down but not out. At the earliest opportunity, including where a community needs to act together in the face of collective danger, the old divide surfaces and makes this impossible because the old wounds was never well attended. Very few of the communities studied in the research rose above such divides.

Map showing Jigawa State in the Nigerian space

Why Boko Haram was basically absent in Jigawa remained a puzzle throughout the conference. The research report privileged leadership in its analysis. Some people acknowledged leadership but insisted on amending leadership to particular agency in analysing the Jigawa exception. In other words, leadership is too vague to be a useful analytic of the series of deliberate actions taken to keep Boko Haram off. Some people might quarrel with some of the actions but it was a case of what worked. The question of what worked was a constant in the research reports from the different states. In Yobe, when schools were relocated from some rural spaces to the state capital for fear that they could be attacked by Boko Haram, the decision was greeted with uproar. When Chibok girls were abducted from a typical rural school shortly after that, the relocation decision became the most applauded.

For those like this reporter who was on the ground in Jigawa during the time, the idea of giving more space to gubernatorial agency in trying to understand what happened was certainly not objectionable, not minding the devil’s advocate implication of saying so with the subsequent emergence of Sule Lamido as a sort of an elephant in the room. It should be difficult to be anything but a witness of truth for anyone who saw how things worked out. Moreover, it is not about accolades or denial of it to the then governor of Jigawa but about the theory that conflict management has become a disaster in Nigeria because of the crisis of political education and the associated governance tactics of most governors, if you take the state level. It could be said, up to a point that where a governor doesn’t want violent conflict, there would be none or, at worst, very few of such. Peace is a function of governance. And we must have the courage to say this for whoever proved this point, irrespective of personal or public reservations. Of course, there was an interesting analogy by the participant who wondered if the more apt explanation for the Jigawa puzzle in Boko Haram is not because Boko Haram commanders still have no idea that Jigawa and Kano are now two different states.

Governors at work: are they too overwhelmed as leaders?

Against the above background, the question would be: what sort of leadership, individual and collective, would permit school children wearing different uniforms in a same school in a multi-cultural formation as Nigeria; watch and do nothing over breakdown of trust between citizens and security agencies, allow settlement to be determined by one’s religious affiliation and even the market one patronises, among others. Is it that the leaders are not aware or they don’t understand the implications or they do not care. Or are they overwhelmed too? Why might any such possibilities exist? Is it time that would solve the problem or a deliberate choice to be made? By who and when if the solution lies in a deliberate choice? Professor Jibrin Ibrahim who coordinated the “National Conference on Community Resilience to Boko Haram Insurgency” must be right, in this context, to say the study is a potentially important one for a country which has been undergoing shocks, from kidnapping to rural banditry and full scale insurgencies that have tasked the national security establishment. That is if Jibo himself has not been too gleeful in relating to resilience. That would be the last subject on Intervention‘s coverage of the “National Conference on Community Resilience to Boko Haram Insurgency”.

Researchers in Nigeria studying the nature and pattern of resilience to Boko Haram insurgency have concluded on the note that breakdown of social cohesion, unemployment, leadership at local levels, crisis of trust between the people and security agencies, poverty and geography were the most decisive factors which shaped resilience to the Boko Haram insurgency in the north. At the two-day “National Conference on Community Resilience to Boko Haram Insurgency” which ended today, Friday, May 12^th, 2017 in Abuja, the preliminary research report explained how each of these factors worked out in such a way that resilience was low in some places, high in some others and simply indeterminate in yet others in the 20 settlements/communities studied in four states in the north east and Kano and Jigawa in the north west.

But it argued against the analogy that poverty made people align with Boko Haram or undermined resilience, saying that if that were so, then Jigawa State should have been the hub of insurgency rather than Yobe. Both states have basically the same cultural, religious and economic constitution. Or that Kano should not have seen much Boko Haram attacks at all, being the wealthiest of the three states –Kano, Jigawa and Yobe. It didn’t dismiss extreme poverty in the north, both as an instigator of violence and undermining factor of resilience. But it draws attention to how income inequality could be the dangerous dimension, citing how low income inequality gap helped resilience in Gombi contrary to how high income inequality gap undid resilience in Mubi where a few rich people co-existed with the rest.

Relating to unemployment, it said the situation whereby government forces would say that a thousand Boko Haram terrorists had been killed and another thousand turns up the next day spoke to how unemployment undermined resilience. It linked this to the success of Boko Haram’s strategy of loans, motorcycles and underwriting of marriage for those who could not afford it, mainly unemployed elements.

In the case of how communal cohesion favoured or undermined resilience, it cited Bama where historical disaffection between original and new settlers was a factor against community cohesion and Gwoza where Christian/Muslim disunity was at issue.

It gave the example of how geography as a factor worked for resilience for Biu in Borno State whose elevated location denied the insurgents advantage of sneaking into the area unlike Gwoza with its undulating space and hiding places for attackers. While leadership, especially of the Emir of Ningi in Bauchi State and leadership broadly in Gombi was a factor in the successful mobilisation and coordination of the local hunters as well as galvanising the Civilian Joint Task Force, (JTF), it was the opposite in some named towns and communities. It cited as a classic case of community trust crisis the celebration of Boko Haram in Yobe initially when attacks were concentrated on security forces and how the police looked a bit lukewarm when Boko Haram turned the gun on the generality of the people later. The preliminary report mentioned how things developed to a point where who to trust in sharing information about impending danger became a problem as no one trusted anyone, including security elements. This is contrasted to the community trust level which enabled everyone –Christians, Muslims, security operatives, etc in Azare in Bauchi, for example, to confront and overwhelm Boko Haram at great risks.

Making its recommendations, the research singled out incomplete resolution of conflicts as a major threat to community cohesion, stressed the primacy of developing local leadership, undermining hate speeches, strengthening Police –Community relations and entrenching inter-face between groups in the society.

It is a data rich report whose ranges can hardly be captured well very quickly. It had been two days of intense checking and cross-checking of data against conceptual and methodological claims, the end result of which could be a groundbreaking study of resilience in the African setting. In other words, the study of resilience strictly in terms of the subjective propensities of the people in the communities studied, resilience that has been completely outside of the influence of big business or market terms.

The first day saw a lot of attention and reflexivity on the question of when is it resilience, resistance or preventive measures and how might desperation activities be distinguished from the actions of what some scholars of resilience call the autotelic subject: the self-governing individual who has come to grips with the inevitability of disruption or uncertainties definitive of the age of rapid transnationalism and learnt adaptive skills that enables him or her or the community to turn insecurity into self-actualisation and even opportunities. A key question in this regard was, therefore, that posed by Professor Ogoh Alubo of the University of Jos, a session chair, regarding whether there are local terminologies for the concept of resilience.

Other key questions posed along the line includes that of what form of leadership emerged when official leadership abdicated; the gendered character, (women warrior) of ‘resilience’ in certain specific communities in Adamawa State, for example and the whole question of what notion of community the research was dealing with. Other questions included whether resilience is all about community reaction/responses/survival in certain ways and bouncing forward or about how resilience was organised and managed and with what successes or failures? How does resistance fit in if the dominant notion of it in the literature is as a critique of resilience in favour of attention to what some academics of resilience have called the macro-structures that give rise to risks.

A number of empirical questions also attracted attention such as the geography of Boko Haram’s insurgency, why Jigawa State, for instance, recorded very few attacks even though it is within the belt and how did Kano suffer so much losses even as it is not in the North-East. These questions might make the study harmonise or disentangle coping strategies, desperation activities, preventive measures, resilience and resistance.

Professor Jibrin Ibrahim, the Coordinator of the “National Conference on Community Resilience to Boko Haram Insurgency” who provided an insight at the opening and closing sessions confessed that the study started with k-leg but had made the journey. He said it is a potentially important study for Nigeria which has, in his words, been undergoing shocks, from kidnapping to rural banditry and full scale insurgencies tasking for the national security establishment. He spoke of how sceptical he was about the study initially. That is not so anymore, he said, going further to harp on the differences in coping with the insurgency observable among different communities. While some responded to attacks with different defensive mechanisms, other communities were shattered. The issue is getting at the characteristic features of each pattern of response, with particular reference to the linkage to agency/leadership.

Declaring the conference open yesterday, Professor Attahiru Jega, immediate past Chairman of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) and Bayero University, Kano Professor of Political Science stressed the importance of the study. Pointing out how disasters and emergencies, be they Tsunamis, conflicts, have devastated communities, Jega, however, drew attention to how such communities must pick up the pieces and get on with life. For that reason, said Jega, it is of importance to understand how communities cope with such social, economic and political upheavals.

Mallam Y Z Y’au, Executive Director of the Centre for Information Technology and Development, (CITAD) which organised the research spoke of how problematic methodology was for the study that the workshop on it had to be repeated. He spoke not just to the question of how to determine and access the information needed for the study but also to what many of the senior academics at the conference regarded as the crisis of methodology in Nigerian scholarship.

Aside from Professors Jibrin Ibrahim and Attahiru Jega, there were Professor Ogoh Alubo of the University of Jos, Professors Sam Egwu and Pam Dung Sha of the Department of Political Science at the University of Jos, Professors Hauwa Biu and Pat Donli, both of the University of Maiduguri,, Asmau Joda, the Yola based gender activist and member of the Presidential Committee on the North East, Dr. Aminu Aliyu of the Department of Economics in Bayero University, Kano, Ene Edeh from Search for Common Ground, (SFCG) and Mallam Yunusa Zakeri Y’au, the Executive Director of the Centre for Information Technology and Development, (CITAD) which is running the resilience research with support from the United States Institute for Peace.

By Hamza Ibrahim Chinade.

The Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has organized a capacity building workshop for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in Taraba state on Internet Security and Safety issues. The training which took place at Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) secretariat Jalingo was aimed at alerting and equipping members of civil society on insecurity concerns and how to prevent themselves against threats such as fraud, hacking, data and documents thefts, phishing, email-spoofing, cybercrime, personality theft, identify theft, online blackmail and harassment and other serious security issues.

Sessions facilitated at the workshop included Understanding Internet Security and Safety, General Online Safety Tips among others. Participants expressed their happiness for the training that some of them described as a barricade to internet insecurity and threats. Ubale M. Umarah of Rural Education Improvement and Development (REID) commended CITAD’s effort at organizing the training and hopes the organization will look at the possibility of holding another similar training for other internet users which according to him are ignorant of what the participants were taught. Another participant, Nadi Fwaje of Taraba State University admitted that the training has provided him with security and safety tips on using the internet and he will now be cautious of what he used to ignore for his own safety.

The training ended with an experience sharing on the theme of the workshop “Internet Security and Safety Training” to allow for debate and make the issues even more practical and glaring, many questions were asked and explanation made by the facilitators.

By Hamza Ibrahim Chinade.

As it widens the scope and strategy of curbing Hate and Dangerous Speech in Nigeria especially on social and conventional media with a view to ending religious and tribal speech, utterances or comments that pose threat to peace and mutual coexistence among adherents of different religions, tribes, affiliations, or groups, the Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has engaged people of the North-Eastern part of the country in Jalingo, the Taraba state capital in a public sensitization lecture that extensively treated issues of concern on Hate and Dangerous Speech.

CITAD implements “Curbing Hate and Dangerous Speech Project” with support from Mac Arthur Foundation and has been holding public sensitizations across different regions of the country to complement the monitoring and countering Hate and Dangerous Speech, engaging religious, tribal and community leaders, monthly press briefing and other mechanisms aimed at putting a stop to Hate and Dangerous Speech as well as promoting understanding, tolerance and mutual respect among people.

Giving an opening remark, the project’s coordinator who is also the Senior Programmes Officer Peace and Conflict, Malam Isah Garba noted that the Jalingo public sensitization is a continuation of the project’s engagement with the public in order to enlighten them and seek their inputs towards eradicating Hate and Dangerous Speech especially on social media cautioning that Hate and Dangerous Speech poses a serious threat that needs to be confronted collectively, he added that Jalingo was chosen to host the public sensitization for North-East.

The participants were sensitized on the concept of Hate and Dangerous Speech, their criteria and qualifications, countering measures and how they can join the advocacy for condemning Hate and Dangerous Speech and strengthening and promoting the cause of peace especially among social media users. Many questions were raised by the participants and addressed by the facilitators. Other participants also recommended that the sensitization be conducted continuously and at different states other than on regional basis so that numerous stakeholders will be targeted. Following the public sensitization lecture, the participating students from Taraba State University and College of Education Zing have resolved to establish Students for Peace Associations in their institutions while grass root youths organizations that have no online presence also resolved to create social media accounts to join the campaign and communicate resolutions of the sensitizations to other youths who are absent the lecture. The public sensitization ended with a communiqué jointly released by the participating CSOs, religious and tribal organizations. The event was attended by representatives of Jama’atul Nasril Islam (JNI), Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), youths and students associations, women groups, Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Associations of Nigeria (MACBAN) and the media among others.

This form must be completed and submitted by all prospective participants

Introduction

The Annual Abuja Sumer Institute (ASI) for Young Women is an Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) and Women’s Rights Advancements and Protection Alternative (WRAPA) in collaboration with the African Studies Program at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and the Everett Program, an Info Tech Social Entrepreneurial training organization from the University of California, Santa Cruz are starting an Annual Abuja Summer Institute (ASI) for Young Women.

The institute is designed to provide ICT training and marketable skills for young women from the NW and NE Zones, areas of Nigeria where opportunities are extremely limited. The curriculum will include training on blogging such as WordPress, the use of graphic apps for events, weddings, etc, digital video and photographic applications, mobile phone/GSM applications for micro-enterprises, and other applications.  The Institute’s objective is to provide real world, practical training in ICT tools that will empower young women work in the ICT industry and to start Micro-enterprises that will add value to their communities.  The long term goal is to boost northern women’s capacity to participate in and to grow northern economy.

The institute which will hold in Abuja lasts for one week. A few scholarships are available for to cover accommodation and feeding for qualified young women from the North East and North East of Nigeria.

Minimum Requirements

Applicants must be female from either the North East or North West and must:

1. A minimum of secondary school education
2. Adequate written and spoken English Language Proficiency
3. Computer literate
4. Present certificate of indigence of any of the states from the two regions

How to Apply

1. Click this Button to Download the PDF and print for offline filling and send to info@citad.org 
2. Fill the online form below and submit

FORM

By

Sagiru Ado

ICT quiz continue to be a major ingredient for raising awareness on ICT among teachers and students, encouraging the study of computer education and test ICT knowledge of students of secondary schools. In its effort to promote the ICT literacy in the state and the country,

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An expert has revealed how the advent of Boko Haram insurgency has crippled business activities in Yobe State, north west Nigeria. “Non-indigenes in Yobe who constituted the (majority) in the commercial and trading activities ..were forced to flee. ..evidence abound ..in Damaturu,Potiskum and Gashua where gaps were created.In most cases , the important goods required in towns have to be booked in advance ,because (they) have to be sent in from either Kano,Kaduna,Lagos or Onitsha.This is because the Ibo traders that mostly sell these commodities have relocated to their places of origin or a more peaceful environment”. This was part of the gripping disclosures made by Raji Rafiu Boye,a lecturer at the Department of Political Science,Yobe State University,Damaturu.

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By

Kabiru Dakata

Introduction

Dr. M. S. Sagagi presenting a paper

The Kano State House of Assembly recently took highly commendable decision by seeking for citizens input on the 2014 budget proposal in the State. In response to the need for participatory budgeting, the State House of Assembly has called for submission of memorandum from concerned Civil Society Organizations and citizens in the state.

Conscious of the need for consensus-building amongst civil society groups in Kano State on the 2014 budget proposal and, of course, which will form civil society inputs to the budget formulation process, theCentre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD),  in collaboration with the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD),organized a CSOs forum on the 22^nd January 2014.

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By Sufyan Lawal Kabo

On 21/12/2013, the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) in its effort to sensitize rural communities on how to use ICTs for community development, collaborated  with Babura Facebook Users Forum and organised a one day workshop on the use of ICT for community development at GGSS Babura. At least 103 comprising of youths, and elderly people attended the workshop. Also in attendance were the Hakimi (District head) of Babura, Alhaji Hadi Mustapha (Sarkin Bai of Ringim) ably represented by Alhaji Nura Mustapha. Others were Engr Abdurrazak Nakore, the Executive Secretary of Jigawa State Rural Electrification Board, Mal Kamilu Adamu, a retired Zonal Director of Jigawa State Ministry of Education and other respected dignitaries.

Certificate of Appreciation

Alhaji Nura Mustapha representing District head of Babura presenting certificate to CITAD

Photograph of Guests, Members and Perticipants

Cross Section of the Participants

The objetive of the workshop was to sensitize participants on the use of  ICTs for community development.The opening prayer was offered by Alhaji Bature Alhassan Babura, a community elder who prayed for a successful completion of the workshop.

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LECTURE ORGANIZED BY CITAD AT MAMBAYYA HOUSE ON SATURDAY 23^RD NOVEMBER, 2013

By Sagir Ado and Nura Maaji

Being the only medium of communication that provides people with the opportunity unprecedented in the history of humanity, of creating public spaces to share debate and promote issues of concern affecting their lives. Social Media is so strategic and indispensable to the extent that for PEACE CAMPAIGN to be adequately pursued, one must aliened him or herself with the platform of a particular social media enterprise. Due to the importance of the Social Media for the promotion of Peace, Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has instituted a special program for peace building using social media. The aim of the program is to provide an alternative platform to build and promote peace. Series of activities are designed to achieve this objective; one of this is to organize a public lecture on ICTs in peace building, at least once every quarter. 

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By  Sufyan Lawal Kabo

The 10^th Kano State ICT quiz for secondary schools held on 28^th November, 2013 at Rumfa Collage, Kano. Twenty eight (28) schools across the state participated in the competition. They were:

GSS Kunya                       GGSS Yargaya
GGC Gezawa                      Maitama Sule Science Secondary School, Gaya
GSS Garko                          GTC Kano
GGS Dala                            GSS Stadium
GSS Rano                           GSS K/Mazugal
GSS Gwarzo                      Day Science College, Kano (DSCK)
GSSS Giginyu                   Day Technical & Science College (DTSC) Kano
GGSS Jogana                    GGSS Gwale
GGSS Sani Mainagge      GGSS Kuka Bulukiya
GSS Bichi                            GGSS Kwankwaso
D/K Science College      GSS Dala
GGUC Kachako                GSS Bachirawa
GSS Shekara                      GSS Minjibir
GTC Ungoggo                   GGSS T/Wada

The quiz started with an opening prayer from one of the teachers of participating schools, followed by opening remarks by the representative of CITAD Executive Director, Malam Ahmad Abdullahi Yakasai, the Training Coordinator of CITAD who stood in for the CITAD Executive Director offered the welcome remarks, taking opporutity to explain the objectives of the quiz as a vehicle for the promotion of ICT literacy in the state and sensitization of school communities to the need for computers. He added that quiz was also to build ICT interest and instill in the minds of the students need the important of taking a career in the ICT profession. Equally impriantn he added was the quiz serves as an advocacy tool on the need for school proprietors and governments to provide computers and ICT facilities to the schools.

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BY SUFYAN KABO

In furtherance of its youth empowerment program, the Kano State Government conducted an ICT capacity training for 1000 GSM repairers. The training which was sponsored through the State’s Ministry of Commerce and Industries, Cooperatives and Tourism was facilitated by the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) in Collaboration with the Association of GSM marketers and repairers. The objective of the training was to build the capacity of the participants to use software packages in the repairs of GSM handsets. The 1000 participants were drawn from all the 44 local government areas of the state.

Cross Section of participants	Members of the High Table at the opening Ceremony	Director of Commerce making speech
Commissioner of Commerce Kano State	Another side of participants	Mal Umaru Isyaku Dan fulani Chairnan GSM Mkt Ass

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By Isyaku Garba

The Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) on 7^th October 2013, commenced a 5-day  ICT training for the Directors of Jigawa State Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.   The objective of the training was to enhance the capacity of the participants in the use of ICTs for educational administration and management.  The training was part of CITAD’s support to the ministry in its effort to use ICT to enhancing efficiency and effectiveness in managing schools. The training held at GSSS, Dutse.

Cross Section of the Participants

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BY Kamaluddeen Umar

The Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) and Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) with support from Oxfam Novib conducted the 2^nd Extractive Industry Literacy Quiz for Secondary schools in Zamfara State on 24^th July, 2013. The objective of the quiz was to promote awareness about the extractive industry transparency as provided in the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) Act, including accounting for environmental degradation. The quiz which was part of a larger project being implemented by CISLAC across the country to promote transparency and accountability in the extractive industry sector.

Gift presenting to the Winner

Cross section of the participants

Cross section of the participants

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