By Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye
Nana Tanko serves as the Executive Director of the Victims Support Fund (VSF), the organisation that is responsible for accounting, operational and administrative operations in many of the internally displaced people’s (IDP) camps. In this interview, she speaks about the challenges of working in the North-East and the successes recorded, despite the fact that over N30 billion pledged by individuals as takeoff grants have yet to be redeemed.
What are the functions of the Victims Support Fund (VSF)?
President Goodluck Jonathan, in 2014, when confronted with the problem of the insurgency in the Northeast, decided to seek the support of the private sector in responding to the needs of the victims of the insurgency. In 2009, when the insurgency became rough, the security forces worked very hard to calm down the situation. By 2014, he decided that it was time we started dealing with the victims. That was when the Chairman, General T. Y. Danjuma, was asked to lead a group of eminent Nigerians to mobilise funds as well as develop appropriate interventions, to meet the needs of the victims.
So what strategies did General Danjuma-led committee come up with?
One of the first decisions they took was to set up a foundation, the Nigerian Foundation to support the victims of terrorism. Then they had a fundraising event where they invited the government and private sectors to contribute to the fund. The chairman, General T. Y. Danjuma was the largest individual donor to the fund. Of course, the government contributed, at least to give an incentive to the private sector. After raising the funds, the foundation was supposed to be like its implementing arm. Whatever they wanted was done through the foundation. They employed full-time staff to run its affairs while they were registered as a not-for-profit organisation,. So it was set up completely outside of the government. In 2015, they brought in Prof. Sunday Ochochie as pioneer Executive Director. I came in as Director of Programmes. We worked together all those years, focusing mainly on the North-East. We worked in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe States. We gave grants to about 18 hospitals in the northern part of Nigeria. We made sure the children were encouraged to continue with their education because a lot of them were traumatised. They didn’t want to go back to school because the schools were the targets of attacks. We had to look for interventions like books, writing materials, school bags, and sandals, to give them to go back to school.
The VSF has been operating for eight years. What are some of the biggest challenges you have had to face in the course of your operations?
The major one is funding. People pledged over N50 billion, almost N60 billion. But what the committee recovered was probably N30 billion. This is where we appreciate the leadership of General T. Y. Danjuma and the rest of the members of the committee. They’ve been very prudent in the management of the resources. One of the major things the managers of VSF did was to invest the money. At a point, we were just spending the interest that was coming out. And then now that the interest has collapsed, we are spending our money. Over the years, we had done much that cost up to N20 billion. So the major challenge is that people did not redeem their pledges. We’ve had to go with what we have. The second is the fact that the insurgency is still on. One of the challenges is that you could go and rebuild a community and it can come under attack again. Usually, in humanitarian work, you’re supposed not to work closely with the military. But because of the type of job we do, we’ve had to work closely with the military and other security forces to give us support to go into the communities.
Have you, at any time, had near-misses?
Yes, we’ve had situations where we were ambushed or had planted bombs explode close to us. But you just keep on going because you know that there are indigent people out there, and you must do everything to help them.
Could you put a figure on the intervention funding and do you have the number of persons that had been impacted?
I can give you real figures. But I don’t have it in my head. I know we have supported over 1,756,172 victims. These figures don’t include the Benue State and Taraba figures. We’ve helped hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren; we’ve given them support. One of our good programmes has been the support we have been giving to foster children, to children who lost their parents. We work with the communities to identify them. We also work with the community leaders to select families, and give them grants and support to make sure their children are well-taken care of.
Recently the last IDP camp in Maiduguri was closed down. Why and what’s the next step?
The government of Borno State decided, with the coming of Governor Zulum, that they are not sustainable anymore. The resources and funding were really depleted. People were sitting in camps and didn’t have food. All kinds of vices were happening among people because they wanted to survive. There was a lot of sexual harassment and abuse because women had to go out to look for ways to sustain themselves. The development partners could not cope. So the government decided to send home people who had been in the camps for eight or nine years. In any case, they were already frustrated. They wanted to go home. The government decided to rehabilitate or resettle them in areas that had already been liberated from terrorists. They sat down with the military and worked out those areas they felt were secured. They selected major towns and local government headquarters. Since then they had been closing camps. They had closed seven camps, by the time they invited the VSF to come and help. Now in Maiduguri, there’s no longer any formal camp: all camps are informal. But we told the government we won’t do everything. We undertook to take care of the logistics of moving the people and providing shelter, food and non-food items for them. We also provided some grants so that they can restart economic activities. So basically that’s what we have tried to do, to take them back so that they can go back to their farms and some of their trading activities.
We also understand you’re expanding the scope of your operations. Can you tell us more about that?
Apart from the Borno State project in which about 100,000 people were moved, we have seen that terrorism is no longer limited to the North-East. We have seen it spread across Nigeria. It may be Boko Haram; it may not be. The government has also identified bandits as terrorists. During the COVID-19 era, we developed COVID interventions across the country, where we supported, with food, non-food items, Personal protective equipment (PPE), water, test kits and a whole range of interventions. We went a little bit away from the work we had been doing. Apart from COVID, we were invited to come into Benue, Taraba and Niger States where there had been a lot of attacks. So what is new in our strategy is that we are now looking at the North-West, the North-Central and the North-East. Another thing that happened is that there had been attacks in the South. So we’ve now developed a special fund that will also look at interventions in the South and other states where we are not directly involved or on the ground. So that for us is what is new. We have streamlined our strategies to focus on education, livelihood, psychosocial support, protection and peace-building.
As a woman, heading this kind of organisation in a terrain like Northern Nigeria with its conservative nature must have been really challenging. What are some of the peculiar challenges that you have had to deal with?
I had led an organisation that worked in even more difficult terrain. I oversaw interventions in 18 countries in West and Central Africa. They included places like Liberia and Sierra Leone when they went through their terrible wars, Guinea Bissau and Guinea Conakry. So for me, what has kept me going is making changes, bringing relevance back into the lives of people that have been terrorised by war and terrorist activities. I am from the North-East. These are my people. These are the places where I grew up. My parents lived in Gworza and it’s one of the epicentres of attacks. I schooled in Maiduguri. My husband is from Taraba. I am from Gombe State. So it’s home. I think that has helped me. That has always opened doors for me. I’ve discovered that no matter how conservative people are when they are in trouble and you come to help them, they don’t stop to look at who you are or where you are coming from. Nothing gives me joy more than to go to a school that was hitherto destroyed and find that the children are all coming back. They have school bags, books and all of that. The teachers are happy to do whatever little they can to support the children. Then you go and see women who would tell you: ‘after the insurgency, we had nothing. But look at what you have done for us. Now I can do this and that.’ That’s what gives me a lot of joy.
With all these near-misses, your family must be traumatised. How have these impacted their lives knowing that you’re always treading on dangerous ground?
I lost my husband some time ago. It was not easy. But having lost him, I decided to throw myself into this job. I thank God that my children have all grown; at least the last one now is in the university. I have three children: two boys and one girl. My first son got married not long ago, and now has a daughter. One does not live here. He works abroad. The other one went to join him. What that means is, I’m practically alone. I just throw myself into the job. The children are very anxious for me, especially when they hear stories. But that is the mother they have known all their lives. As I said, I worked in West and Central Africa. It was a very rough terrain. But they were with me over there. They’ve lived with that all their lives. One thing is that it has made us a very prayerful family. We are a faith people and so we just believe that if God has called me to this job, then He is able to keep me.
In the midst of all these, do you find time to relax? Do you have a favourite travel destination?
I’ve never had that luxury of going for a holiday and lying down in the sun somewhere. In fact, I hardly go on annual leave. But I thank God because He’s given me the strength and health to take me through.
What’s the next step for VSF?
Our funds are dwindling. We think in the next three years, we would have spent our money. I’m glad that we have spent the resources well. But at the same time, I’m not so happy because terrorist activities have grown, rather than dwindled, as we expected. Unfortunately, the resources we have cannot last more than three years. For me, that is just the pain of it, to now say that we have to plan to fold up our activities. We will be having interventions for maybe 30 months from now. After that, we’ll be winding down. So our strategic plan is from January 2023 to December 2025. And everything around the VSF will come to an end. Our prayer is that there will still be an effort from the private sector to give support to victims of terrorism. But most importantly, that terrorist activities would be curtailed so that people can go back to their communities and live normal life.