Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State in Nigeria, has always played a key role in the economy of the Lake Chad Basin, even though the city was also a Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’way Wa’l-Jihād (JAS), commonly referred to as Boko Haram, hot spot.

But recently the insurgency had subsided somewhat.

An Institute for Security Studies (ISS) report published on Thursday, October 21, said the now relative peace provided an opportunity to rebuild the economy, triggering growth in other areas affected by the insurgency and that economic recovery could also enable communities to build resilience against being used by armed groups for their own gains.

It said that before the onset of the JAS insurgency in 2009, Nigeria’s northeast region engaged in more cross-border than in-country trade – carried out mostly through Borno State. Farmers, traders, transporters and fishermen in the Lake Chad Basin region relied on Maiduguri as a crucial trade hub.

But the insurgency crisis had disrupted livelihoods in the city and the region and total trade between Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger had declined by more than 70% since the conflict began, reducing the income of businesses and households.

To address the insecurity, in 2018 the Lake Chad Basin Council of Ministers adopted the Regional Strategy for the Stabilisation, Recovery and Resilience of the areas most affected by the insurgency. It was endorsed by the African Union’s Peace and Security Council and supported by the United Nations Development Programme. Its core aim was to restore and create sustainable livelihoods for insurgency-hit communities.

In Borno State, locals had typically relied on crop and livestock farming, fishing and trade.

But food prices at the Monday Market – the largest in Maiduguri – skyrocketed after the military and violent extremists blocked transport routes and made farms inaccessible. Beef prices spiked and residents and traders reported a decline in the cattle market.

Extortion by security forces was also a factor.

Fish was no longer available in abundance, despite being one of the main goods produced in Borno State and traded throughout the country and region.

Baga in the Kukawa Local Government Area – once the primary source for this commodity – was now unsafe for fishing due to violent extremism.

The ISS quoted the Borno Fish Producers and Marketers’ Association as saying that it had been losing 500 million naira weekly as a result of the insurgency and had reduced trade volumes. Many businesses moved to Kano State in north-west Nigeria because of the crisis, taking away jobs and much-needed incomes.

While some sectors in Maiduguri had been hit hard by violent extremism, others – such as the real estate and construction industries – were booming. This was due, said the ISS, to the influx of mostly international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) because of the insurgency.

But the flip side of the construction boom was higher rent prices.

However, the NGOs had “a strange kind of tourism economy in Maiduguri as livelihoods are built around them”, the ISS report said.

NGO jobs became more attractive than the civil service and many people had made a fortune serving as vendors to the non-profit sector. The Borno State government had mandated that local staff be hired, and NGO posts became a new object of resource conflict, the ISS said.

But, although the cash coming into Maiduguri’s economy by these external actors through consumption and procurement has been beneficial, it remains a short-term solution to the long-term problem of recovery.

The ISS said the only way for Maiduguri’s economic revival to become stable and sustainable was to stop it from being closely linked to the conflict.

Higher output levels, especially in the agricultural sector, and national and cross-border trade had to be restored, it said.