NIGERIA
I. INTRODUCTION
By any and all accounts, representing an institution in Nigeria (or South Africa, or Ethiopia in the African Continent) is, in and of itself, a personal feat in anyone’s public career.
As a long-timer in the UN(HCR) If I had opted to retire at 62 without any loss of entitlements, Chad would have been my last duty station. But I opted to go all the way to the mandatory age of 65. So, I applied and was given the opportunity to serve in Nigeria as Representative for the full 3 years. The best service in the organization, not so much for what I did for UNHCR, but more because of what I learned from and about Nigeria: the complex history, the convoluted politics, the struggling economy amid hundreds of billionaires and huge resources, foreign interests, the Biafra complex issue, the Nigerian literature especially, and the respect I was given by government authorities as a result of my statute and role. And what I managed to do for my own team.
I came to Nigeria in March of 2017. My first assignment, even before dealing with the persons of concern, raison-d’etre of our presence in the country, was to normalize working relations between UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Of course, first, I needed to know what was wrong with it. It turns out that while UNHCR Representative (Dikonge Angele) had been warning the organization about an evolving IDP situation in NE Nigeria to which UNHCR needed to respond, and despite her initiatives, resources did not follow and the operational responsibilities allocated to UNHCR in NE Nigeria had been claimed by IOM. There were hundreds of thousands of victims of Boko Haram insurgency displaced internally, apart from Nigerian refugees in Chad and Cameroon. As such, with readily available resources, IOM had taken the lead in areas that were the primary mandated responsibility of UNHCR in the humanitarian division of labor. As such, UNHCR establishing an office in Maiduguri (Borno State) and claiming leadership in Protection, Shelter and coordination, came up against organizations that had been on the ground before UNHCR. That is the summary, so as not to overstate the issue. I did take most of my first year in Nigeria to find an accommodation with IOM, in order to prove to both IOM and my team that “one needed not extinguish one light so that the other can shine. Both could shine”. This philosophical approach was not easy neither for IOM nor for my team. The two organizations in Nigeria had been focused more on jostling in the conflict, and both were happy to comply with the other’s urge for conflict. In the process, we were forgetting why we were in the country to start with.
Indeed, IOM had enlisted government personalities on its side, and they were just as ready to drag me into their way of managing conflict, until I told the government focal point for humanitarian issues that UNHCR was not in the country to ask for help from the government, but to help the government deal with a humanitarian issue, and that I had enough authority without outside help to negotiate with another organization affiliated to the UN. But managing this conflict created inside my team a resentment against my approach. Was I successful? Eventually yes, with the withdrawal of the IOM head of mission, while on my side, I repressed attempts at remaining waylaid, not very successfully, it turned out. Also, it was the beginning of a rough patch with my own Deputy. Let me stop here on this one.
II. THE TEAM
In Nigeria, I met a team focused on the IDPs in NE Nigeria, based both in Abuja and Maiduguri. I expanded that team with another one that we created with the influx of Cameroonian refugees in East and SE Nigeria in 2018.
The Representation also oversaw urban refugees in Lagos, a legacy dormant operation, without real solutions in sight. Legacy because this had been the country office until the capital moved to Abuja. Refugees here were a group of people who were not ready to discuss solutions other than resettlement. In my only visit to this office, I had extensive conversation with the refugees and informed them that no country would countenance resettlement for them, and that the best would be to seek integration into the local socioeconomic tissue after such a long time. Pity that a Representative does not have the material time to review individual cases when there are hundreds of thousands other persons of concern to take care of.
The main operation in NE Nigeria was centred around the Sub-Office in Maiduguri, Borno State, with several Units in the State, such as Damasak, Gamboru Ngala, Bama, Banki, a Field Office in Adamawa State (Yola), and another Field Unit in Damaturu, Yobe State. Such expansive geographical spread required that we focus better our resources in order to be effective, particularly as there were IDP camps everywhere, mostly security enclaves beyond which the population did not venture to go in search for livelihoods. And therefore, the main problems of these populations were shelter, health, livelihoods, including access to food and domestic energy. I spent several weeks in Maiduguri, and I also spent a full week in Bama, to understand the essence of our interventions, the real needs of the IDPs, the strategy proposed by my Head of Sub-Office, and the impact of our interventions. I was the only UN country Representative or head of any humanitarian organization that ever visited a small town called Mubi in Northern Adamawa.
All in all, our teams were doing a very good and heroic work in a security environment that was very challenging because the humanitarian help was being delivered in a war zone, with specific government instructions to coordinate with the army the air movements and activities. Captured child soldiers and the abducted Chibok schoolgirls were for us the height of the protection challenges that this insurgency represented, clearly delineating the following characteristics of the situation:
A prolonged humanitarian response that should attempt to find solutions that were durable, within the logic of a sustained military campaign.
A war that needed to end, which was essentially a government challenge.
Staying and delivering while at the same time seeking to provide the affected people with an end to their displacement in the context of war. In order to stay and deliver required heavy investment for the security of all staff.
That was a complex environment that required constant and difficult dialogue between the humanitarian group, the army and the government. It therefore required complex coordination, for which the Humanitarian Coordinator permanently outposted his Deputy in Maiduguri. It was not guaranteed that a military campaign would bring the end to this situation, and the humanitarian agencies found themselves limited by a strong state that nonetheless could not free the entire country. And of course, there was constant dispute between the government and the humanitarian group about the approximate numbers of affected people that was acceptable to both.
The Boko Haram crisis affected also Chad, from where I had just come, Niger, where I also had served earlier, and Cameroon, in differing degrees. In my efforts to understand the situation, I made a point to personally cross Nigeria into Chad, Cameroon into Nigeria and Chad into Cameroon and Nigeria. Travelling has helped me to make good advocacy for the operation with the benefit of field knowledge beyond the reports submitted to me. It also allowed me peace of mind, being aware of the severe limitations of a humanitarian response to resolve positively this situation, limitations that were imposed by governments, undeclared interests and the very nature of the origins of insecurity in the Lake Chad area and in the Sahel.
III. HUMANITARIAN RIVALRIES
I should like to discuss here two of them:
1. first, the mission assigned to me as new Representative to Nigeria, the open conflict between UNHCR and IOM. Arriving with an open mind, I found two agencies locked in a conflict that had been escalated to the government’s humanitarian Director. And for sure she tried to play the intermediary. My first reaction was to inform her in no uncertain terms that as a UN Agency, UNHCR was in the country to help, not to seek help from the government, and that I had all the authority to confront our demons together with the head of IOM. And so we did. This is not a report of what the issues were, but of how I navigated them together with my team. I elected to confront my own team attitudes first, to kill the pleasure of thriving in conflict. I asked my team to leave the battle for me, so it could stay focused on helping the people we professed to care about. From time to time, I would of course refer to the team or create a space for mutual feedback.
I did spend considerable time to also bring my counterpart in IOM to adopt a similar approach so that the IOM field staff could work and deliver to the people in need, while the two of us sorted out the differences. It became clear to me that there were traits that I could not correct or influence, related to the need for IOM, an agency for migration, not for protection, to adapt to humanitarian work. There is much that can be said about it, but perhaps just understanding the culture of each organization would be enough to avoid the pitfalls of rivalries that suck energies and distract from the real reason we were in Nigeria. Pitfalls that brought no positive outcome for no one. I also understood that no amount of reasoning would change the IOM approach of pleasing governments. I am hoping that nonetheless my message permeated in my team, because real emotional investments had been expended before I came onto the scene. I was under no illusion that I could make the miracle, seeing how IOM related with UNHCR, not just in Nigeria, but with the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. It called into question the larger objectives being pursued and the ethics of each organization. But then that is a very slippery terrain I will not explore further here. Suffise it to say that we ended up agreeing on a joint letter to our teams and on a joint SOP, the latter with its own residual challenges. I therefore also did not engage in an aspect of battle I knew was lost from the start.
On my part, I rallied my team also with a call to focus on the institutional strengths of a renowned global organization mandated by the General Assembly of the United Nations, unlike other UN agencies. And in order to do so, I elaborated and submitted to my middle managers a country UNHCR Chart called Mission Statement, that summarized the Mission, Vision and Values of the country team, in line with the Standards of conduct of an International Civil Servant of the United Nations. Both this Chart and the Standards of Conduct are documents I shared with all my staff in Nigeria. In the Chart, I emphasized:
Inclusion (of all parties interested in delivering services to persons of concern),
Accountability (for resources and for the use of power, in line with internal procedures – to be and to be seen to be accountable),
Adherence (to the humanitarian principles and to the code of conduct of the international civil service, including respect for local cultures and differences),
Solutions-orientation (what could we do differently that could contribute to the end of the human suffering),
Respect (for the contribution of others, for different opinions) and
Caring (for the people we were serving and caring for each other in the team).
2. Secondly, the humanitarian funding (Pool Fund management and access, with focus on access)
The challenges of UNHCR related to the humanitarian funding have two origins:
The first is the fact that UNHCR was trying to give the impression of a decentralized organization on fund-raising, while in fact fund-raising was a very centralized activity with a full Section in Geneva very reluctant to empower the field, if they ever had any such plan. Each year, during my last stay in Geneva, this Section celebrated the end of year as a club of elite staff, wittingly or unwittingly signaling by their collective demeanor towards other staff in the organization that without them, the organization would not stand. I allow for the benefit of doubt, that they never noticed that among more than 40 staff in their Section, there was only one African. Meanwhile, they managed to convince senior managers to add fund-raising to the accountabilities of field managers. Where did the little money we managed to raise go? It went to fill the central pot, against a small percentage that was passed back to the successful office in the field. In simple terms, it is like: you raise 10 million Naira, you can expect an increase of your allocated funding by 1.5 million Naira, and the rest would go to the central pot. Allowing the organization to claim that the remaining 8.5 million Naira is part of what the organization authorized you to operate with in the first place (before you raised it).
Corollary to (1), our second challenge was that in fact, field fund-raising is not in the DNA of UNHCR, and therefore we are ill-prepared for opportunities that arise, unlike UNICEF, where fund-raising is already a cultural trait of the way in which they conduct business in the field.
To compound that, a lot of lobbying has worked against UNHCR, precisely because lobbying is not our cultural feature. Ours is to spend the day in the deep field with the people of concern, while other organizations understand that power is where money is and invested time in learning how to present convincing projects for financing. In Nigeria, that created affinities with OCHA (manager of Pool Funds) that worked against UNHCR. While we can and could point out precisely how alliances were built, it was clear to me that more than favouritism, we, as an organization were just not trained to influence funding decisions. And so, I made two major cases for my field teams to benefit from training. In one case, training was organized, but more of a proforma than a real transfer of knowledge. Still, and against all odds, I managed to raise two financing streams in Nigeria: with Daystar Christian Centre in Lagos (10 million Naira) and with a Muslim Association in Abuja (5 million Naira), with a commitment to further work together. How that was sustained and expanded, I am not sure, but I involved national staff, to ensure that there would be continuity of knowledge.
I promoted a field visit to Borno State for Tu Face, and visited in Lagos Cardbury, Daystar Christian Church, Mike Adenuga and Aliko Dangote Foundations. All these were attempts at showing the organization that fund-raising can be done in Africa, especially in countries with many prosperous personalities like Nigeria. In Abuja I targeted and visited twelve Ambassadors also fund-raising. These attempts required sustained work with a positive and enthusiastic team.
It is my considered and lived opinion that the placing of fund-raising as a responsibility of a field manager in UNHCR in its present format is as counterproductive as the chicken eating its own eggs, for the following reasons:
Centralization/decentralization: the decentralization of responsibilities has not been accompanied by measures that also decentralize management of the outcome of fund-raising,
A decentralized administrative management of resource allocation did not follow,
Acknowledging the cultural atrophy and working on it: UNHCR starts from a centralized culture and the decentralization instructions have not been followed by the necessary capacities of managers/teams. And where the effort was made, it was just a gesture that gave the field no deeper knowledge of the required skills. In fact, central fund-raising in Geneva posted a staff in Nairobi that wanted and attempted to manage fund-raising in Nigeria, with the attendant inevitable conflicts.
It is a powerful contradiction which, if allowed to continue, will forever frustrate field fund-raising. Maybe it should really remain centralized, to free field capacities for what they do best, unencumbered by demands that help no one.
IV. CAMEROON REFUGEES
In August 2018, a delegation of eleven Cameroonians in exile came to see me in Abuja to inform me that English Cameroon was preparing to proclaim independence on 1 October (Nigeria independence day coincidentally). We did listen to them but we did not get the import of what they were saying, until (a) we were informed that some of them were arrested by Nigeria on demand from the government of Cameroon and (b) we received reports of fierce fighting in Cameroon and the influx of Cameroonian refugees into East and Southeast Nigeria. By the time we started sending assessment missions to the field in January 2019, we already had 30,000 refugees in the border villages in Taraba, Benue and Cross River States. In my time, due to the complex logistics of access, we never managed to establish an office in Taraba State, and instead we trusted the operations there to a local NGO that mismanaged resources. Mea culpa for engaging an NGO with no knowledge of UNHCR processes, no oversight and little coaching. In Benue, we established a Field Office in Adikpo and in Cross Rivers, the main influx area, a sub-Office in Ogoja and a Field Office in world-famous Calabar.
Three characteristics are to be noted about this influx:
First, that the government allowed UNHCR to practice a hybrid operation, establishing camps in those places where other approaches were impracticable, and in other places, allowed us to leave the refugees integrated into villages and towns. There were real constraints in establishing camps in some places, like in Benue State where one Chief made life so difficult for the refugees and for UNHCR that we ended up uprooting one camp from one place to another, despite the efforts of the State Governor and other superior Chiefs. That gave me a more cogent idea of the depth of issues around land ownership patterns. In particular, where the government was unable to circumvent the local chief.
Secondly, the interest of State governments in providing support to UNHCR in dealing with refugees. The Governor of Cross Rivers summoned me to present the refugee issue to the Regional Parliament, upon which, the Parliament President created a team to follow up on refugee matters, and asked UNHCR to present a programme and a budget for the State to finance, for assisting refugees and local populations in the areas affected by the refugees. Unfortunately, I was at the end of my assignment, and I left this task to the Head of Sub-Office. I am not sure what followed. However, this was a strong indication that refugees could be managed with a different approach and that governments can help UNHCR modify profoundly the default self-serving camp approach. Kenya seems to have matured to that level now and UNHCR can learn from the Kenya example (including their advance over UNHCR on resolving protracted statelessness issues).
We also negotiated and managed to get land for refugees to grow food, to participate in local schools and for local businesses to take place in refugee markets. An expert was added to the new team who introduced cash distribution and combined with reduction of food distribution. Although that food was purchased by UNHCR, WFP having found ways to refuse to provide food to the Cameroon refugees, despite all the efforts I personally made. Cash was gradually introduced to replace food and domestic items distribution. Standard Operating Procedures and process manuals were elaborated that included failsafe measures. Complex.
V. THE SECOND REGIONAL PROTECTION DIALOGUE
The countries of the Lake Chad area affected by the presence of Boko Haram (Nigher, Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad) had met before my arrival at ministerial level on a dialogue about the delivery of protection and assistance to displaced populations in a context of war (First Regional Protection Dialogue). UNHCR was successful in introducing the notion of national responsibility to protect civilians in situations of war as a cornerstone of International Humanitarian Law. Two years later, it fell on me to organize a follow-up second Regional Dialogue on the prevailing protection challenges for these populations. The governments of the four countries were represented at Ministerial level and UNHCR was represented by the Assistant High Commissioner for Protection and the Regional Director (Dakar). It was one major event that I can claim to have organized well, with the strong professional support of the Regional UNHCR Directorate in Dakar. I still came out physically exhausted, and we managed to get the Deputy President, Professor Yemi Osimbajo, to open the Conference.
The Nansen Refugee Award
It so did happen (before the Regional Protection Dialogue, in fact in 2017) that I was notified by headquarters that Zanna Mustapha, a Barrister resident in Maiduguri, would be awarded the Nansen Refugee Award in Geneva in September, as a result of the humanitarian work of his organization (Future Prowess) in educating hundreds of orphans victims of Boko Haram. I made the announcement to the laureate and to the nation. I also accompanied him to receive the award in Geneva. UNHCR Nigeria provided material support to his Foundation and school, and I accompanied him on an advocacy tour in Lagos, where we met with President Obasanjo, to seek sustained support to the Foundation.
VI. STAFF WELFARE AND DEVELOPMENT
I strongly felt that my team had been lacking a strong managerial direction and among the things I did, I included deliberate continuous clarification of policy, emphasis on protection deliverables, proper management of resources, including a preventive self-audit of contracting, against the wishes of my field managers and immediate collaborators, a closer control of recruitment of local staff, to avoid prepotency.
I promoted fund-raising training, which, as Indicated above, was quite poor in its outcomes on the skills of relevant staff. That included also a week of advocacy and fund-raising with Ambassadors in Abuja, accompanied by the two heads of Sub-Offices (Maiduguri and Ogoja).
I took all my P5 and P4 staff to Lagos for a week of Management training, conducted by an external consultant, to allow each of them at that middle level to identify personal strengths and weaknesses, knowing as I did, that after Nigeria, many would be genuinely looking for managerial positions.
I also decided to buy adjustable workstations for staff to decide to work sitting or standing, depending on their wish, so as to promote healthy work styles. I also bought inflatable balls for staff to sit, as well as screen filters for all desktops.
VII. LESSONS LEARNED
As part of my sunset years with UNHCR I learned quite a few lessons in Nigeria and would wish that other managers have such an opportunity.
Rich intellectual and literary culture: Nigeria is an amazing country where intellectual knowledge and literature is concerned. I enjoyed, and still enjoy Nollywood and met personally with Peter Edochie in Anambra City. My literary idols include: Chimamanda Ngozi, Buchi Emecheta, Chinua Achebe, Wolle Soyinka, Ben Okri and many more.
The history of Biafra as described by the literature we know, including on websites, minimizes external interests in the oil of the Delta Region in Nigeria, as well as the role of France in the war: on the one hand, supporting the separatists with an eye on the oil (Elf-Aquitaine, today TotalEnergies), and on the other, whitewashing their conscience with the creation of the Medecins sans Frontieres, an efficient but sanctimonious organization that is critical of all other humanitarian agencies. All you hear about Biafra is ethnic conflict, Africans killing each other, starvation and death and no more. I think the time for correcting narratives has long come. Perhaps the initiative should belong in Nigeria.
There are a few countries that by their sheer demographic and economic size, not only can, but will, affect the Continent, positively or negatively (rather, positively and negatively). One of them is unquestionably Nigeria, which had an overall positive role to play in ending the civil war in Sierra Leone, with the British only arriving after stabilization to claim the victory! Its dissuasive role in the transition process in the Gambia (Yaya Jameh), or the current attempts by France and the EU to force Nigeria to lead the charge against another African country, Niger, given the huge energy stakes in that country. Niger is attempting to assert its independence and free itself from the French sinister and humiliating neocolonial behaviour and exploitation. It is about Uranium, gold and the transit of gas from Nigeria to Europe.
As a manager, it is in Nigeria (and previously in Chad) that I fully played the advocacy role for my operation, with very positive responses from Geneva and Dakar. Manager, advocate, coach, team leader, administrator, risk owner, diplomat. I played all these roles and came to realize that a Representative needed to be a well-rounded personality, focusing on the message and appreciating, but sparing the messenger.
Building and educating the team was an important role I played and with which I was satisfied: I let the team see that it was not about talking less of UNHCR, but about talking of UNHCR less. And about working deliberately to forge a unity of purpose so that the team pushed in the same direction (TEAM meaning – Together Everyone Achieves More).
My Regional Director had offered to facilitate my continuation in Nigeria for the remaining 2 years until my retirement. I opted instead to retire nearer to Mozambique my country, applied and went to Tanzania. Bad decision. Water under the bridge, nothing gained crying over it, now that I am enjoying retirement anyways.
Jose, 16 September 2023
Commentaires