TheCable

One of the most memorable quotes of President Muhammadu Buhari, in the buildup to the 2015 presidential election, is his assertion that the war against insurgency will not have been over until the rescue of the abducted Chibok girls. Far from it.

The recovery of the Chibok girls from Boko Haram will surely be a milestone in the military’s successes against the insurgents, but these successes will mean nothing without the rebuilding of the ruin that terror has visited upon Borno state and the rest of the northeast.

This video shows what is left of the once-decent Maiduguri Airport. Once an important airport for anyone travelling to the north-east, flights to that airport are now run by only two airlines — Azman and Med-View — each of them offering just one flight daily, bar Sundays.

Admittedly, this itself is an improvement on the days when the airport was shut down by the insecurity in Borno, but what is now the Maiduguri Airport is surely substandard to a fairly-run road transport office.

This video is published to provoke some deep thinking: insurgency — and indeed any other kind of violent disturbance — is a wind that blows no one any good, in the long run. It is to make us all look back and rethink what we might have done better to avoid what has been happening in the north since 2009; it is to also challenge the security agencies to reassess how they handled the Boko Haram that Yusuf Mohammed run and whether lessons have been learnt from how Yusuf’s Boko Haram has snowballed to bloodthirsty Abubakar Shekau’s; it is for them to ask if those lessons are being deployed into their handling of other potential insurgent groups, particularly the Shi’ia sect.

It is for everyone who watches to be constantly reminded that it takes a minute to start a war, but forever to end it; that it takes only a moment to destroy but eternity to rebuild.