 All right, ladies and gentlemen, we're about to begin. So if you would take your seats, let me start off by asking my expert colleagues up here at the front of the room, George and Jim and Johnny. Based on what you heard in the first session, what are your guidelines for this scenario? What are you, you know, any kind of cautionary comments or things that you hope will address? Well, if I could start. I mean, one of the things I think clearly came out of the comments in the first round here is that we need to move from the general to the particular, to the specific. We need to disaggregate somehow these broad generalizations about the north, the south, et cetera. It's clear from the comments that some of you believe that there are important groups in this space with whom one can and should work, who deserve and need our support precisely in countering the forces of the drivers of extremism. And so I think as part of this next round and part of the scenario that one of the things you need to think about, who are those groups and how do we engage them? And so that we get out of our typical relationship sets, government to government, et cetera, and think about how we develop those kinds of relationships. Great, Jim? Thanks, David, again, for inviting me and everybody else today. I'm still trying to absorb some of the great comments I heard around the table that reflect my experience in a lot of other places with not just similar backgrounds but similar problems. One being, hey, over the time that Boko Haram has grown up and become a real threat, the Nigerian GDP, what was it, has more than doubled? Tripled. Comment on the importance of security. And boy, I can underline that from my experiences in the Balkans and Iraq that you can't have any development without that. And again, going from both you, David and you, George, going from the general to the specific, in particular, you can't deal with a short-term security problem with a long-term economic social transformation, I don't think, for many reasons. But what you can do is figure out what are the groups out there? And typically, there are four, the people who should be supporting the government, the people who are on the fence, the people who are caught up in any insurgency like Boko Haram, but may or may not be totally committed and the hardcore committed. Each of them require different sets of social, economic, and political approaches. And you can't do that from afar. There's ways to do that down to buying off this group, giving this group more bullets, using force against the third group, or threatening it. There are all kinds of ways, conventional and unconventional, that people have done this at least short-term on the ground, but the emphasis is on the ground. Great. Johnny? Thanks very much. Let me add to the other comments by saying it really is important to focus on the concrete and existential things that can be done in the immediate future. Focus on the current issues. I would also say look for ways to empower reformers who are trying to promote good governance and trying to really empower economic change and reform. Second, call out the spoilers. Call out those who are undermining the progress that is impeding the process of isolating Boko Haram or creating the opportunities for them to continue to move forward. Perfect. Thank you very much. I think that's good advice. I hope you internalize that advice as we go forward in the context of this discussion. There's a lot of moving parts to the scenario. Basically, we're going to ask the questions. Then we're going to show a few slides that frame it. Then we're going to get into the first move. Then I'm going to ask everybody around the table to think about who they might collaborate with and talk to them in a 10-minute break. Then we'll come back and we'll talk about what we have concluded we might be able to do. We'll go to the second move, do the same thing, the third move, do the same thing, and then we'll try to draw some conclusions from all of that. Periodically, I will ask some of you questions about what your groups might do. And you may raise your hand and say, what about us? We have a perspective on this. But we'll have to try to keep it very crisp because there's just a lot to go over in the context of this thing. Let's start with the three questions that we have posed, one of which is going to look familiar. What's the single biggest economic contributor to extremism in northern Nigeria? The deindustrialization of northern Nigeria, increasing poverty, youth unemployment, unequal distribution of natural resources, or other. We don't have to relitigate the first time we sort of did this question. Are there five questions? Five questions. And so youth unemployment is the vast majority of you said that that was the issue. That's clearly going to be central to the scenario. Who said other? You said other. Why'd you say other? Okay, youth empowerment. Okay, that's fine. I'll repeat it if it's up close here. Okay, next, agree or disagree? Nigeria will be unable to counter Boko Haram without the economic revitalization of northern Nigeria. This is a range question. Strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree or disagree, agree or strongly agree. So where are you on this question? Well, that was really non-committal of you. Doesn't, doesn't, you're clearly all over the place. Perhaps this bodes well for a lively discussion. Next, which group has the biggest interest in the economic revitalization of northern Nigeria? The international community, the Nigerian government, northern Nigerian elites, southern Nigerian business interests, international business interests, neighboring countries or other? They're all of the above, geez. None of the above, all of the above. Northern Nigerian elites. Well, that's actually probably accurate. So let's move on to the next question. And nobody said other, which shows that you're, what, you said other? Is there something going on back here? Are we censoring people? I'm sorry, your buttons have all been disconnected. Actually, it's appropriate because we were saying it's the disenfranchised population which has the biggest economic interest. All right, next, what group can best deliver economic assistance to northern Nigeria? International NGOs, the World Bank and the IMF, the United Nations, the Nigerian government, bilateral donors or the ever-popular other. And the Nigerian government is listed as the group that can best do it. Whether they will do it best remains a question. Who said other? Princeton. I think private sector investment is very important here. Private sector investors, Kim. Yes, a combination of private sector and also just what group can or should. I mean, I would agree that it's the Nigerian government but, and I know we're doing a scenario, but the reality is they cannot at the moment. Right, and I think that's the correct, I mean it says can best as opposed to should best. Yes, state governments. Okay, next, what economic measures are best suited to confront the spread of extremism in northern Nigeria? Increased job training for the unemployed and unskilled, economic development projects to restart shuttered factories, infrastructure projects to better connect the north and the south, microfinance for businesses in the region or other. And so microfinance for businesses in the region leads the way by quite a bit. Infrastructure project next, did one of you say other? Why did you say other? Besides craving attention. I didn't see governance, rule of law, corruption. I think this is more a governance question really. Okay, is there one more? Pardon me, that's it. Okay, good. So let's go to the slides that are setting up the scene. And this is exploring the economic drivers of radicalization and extremism. You may not be able to see them extremely well, I will highlight them for you by interpretive dance. Let's go to the first slide please. Okay, the Nigerian economy as many of you have commented on has experienced exponential growth over the past decade. It has seen impressive macroeconomic growth driven by the resource rich south, but the benefits have not been felt broadly and I think that's the critical point of this. GDP, that chart on the right is a GDP growth chart which is remarkable. Now in 2013, over $500 billion. The economy is increasingly diversified although oil represents the biggest part of it. Development is largely focused in the south. Nigeria is ranked as the 33rd most corrupt country in the world out of a cup 200. It's suggested that more than $400 billion has been lost to corruption since 1960 and wealth is largely concentrated in the hands of the few. Next slide. Despite growth there is still rampant poverty and you can look at the differences between the north and the south. In the north the blue region unemployment is 34%. The relative poverty rate is 74%. In the south, while the relative poverty rate is also very high at 67%, unemployment is substantially lower at 19%. Unemployment has been rising even though GDP has been rising. Poverty rates have increased over this period. Rural and youth populations are particularly at risk. 38% of Nigerians between 15 and 24% are without work and 73% of the population in rural areas is in poverty compared to 61%. Northern Nigeria is the hardest hit. Some states have unemployment rates topping 40% and it's estimated that more than 50% of the youth in the north are unemployed as well. Next. And Boko Haram's rise is linked to the northern economic plight. It rose in the disadvantaged north. Easy targets for radicalization for the reasons we've discussed. The growing instability as a result of Boko Haram attacks has wreaked further havoc on the economy, worsening unemployment and poverty and creating even more fertile breeding ground. And Nigeria clearly is in need of economic assistance for all of these reasons. Let's go to the next slide. So this, we are about to get into the scenario moves and we will describe the first move and then we'll give you a bit of a chance to discuss it. Let's go to the first move. By the way, we do have this just for those of you who are watching at home. The following moves and information within are fictional. They're solely for purposes of the peace game and not to be interpreted as real life occurrences. They don't represent a political view on our part. We are not recommending these things happen or predicting that these things will happen. These are just fictional for the purposes of the game. Okay, so the first move focuses on this discussion will focus on Boko Haram's influence growing in Kano and the government there worried about the influence of Boko Haram calls for economic development. They're making a call saying we need help on this front. And there's a fictional Reuters story here saying the extremist group Boko Haram has been gaining support and influence in major northern Nigeria city of Kano. Local reports suggest a number of prominent businessmen in the city have voiced support for the group. Those of you playing local business, you'll need to explain that. Citing its anti-corruption cause and pure interpretation of Islam and hundreds of citizens have been joining the cause in recent weeks. Kano's got 2.1 million people and the goal here is to identify options for economic aid in the north based on just where we're standing with this, where the country is and that we're looking at the situation here in Kano. And each of you will have to tackle this as a group. You and Boko Haram are gonna tell us what you see as the targets of opportunity, why the targets of opportunity there, what looks good to you and why. And then each of the other groups will have to look at this and say, what could we do? Can the European Union write a check? Is there something international NGOs can do? Local Nigerian business interests, some of you are signing on with Boko Haram. Why are you signing on with Boko Haram? You look like you're enjoying signing on with Boko Haram. It's extremely disturbing. Do you cover it? Do you not cover it? And so forth. And so we'll go around the room and we will explore this. But I wanna give you just five minutes. Talk among yourselves and your group. Figure out what your position is in this. If there are any ideas that you've got, if the European Union decides they wanna go and do something in the United Nations, feel free to go talk to the United Nations. Okay, don't get up, don't go too far because we will reconvene in five minutes, okay? Well, we cover it all. You can send me, I'll sacrifice myself. I'll go to the phone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so the work it will be. So I think we need to do things like the profile of one of those businessmen, find one of the businessmen who has the phone. I'm sorry. Scenario, was he down here? He was down here. There was, wasn't there another Nigerian coming and then he didn't come? And I'm gonna start. We'll begin in two minutes. All right, ladies and gentlemen, would you take your seats? Would you return to your seats, please? We'd love to see them. You want Boko Harami Connecticut now? All right, ladies and gentlemen, let's explore this. Clearly, this was a scene setter. It was a first move in the context of all of this. And see, as I walk slowly towards you, you're supposed to grow quiet and respectful. Okay, so folks, we're ready to begin here. It's the media. It's the chattering class, chattering. So what I want to do is clearly this is scene setter. But this is the framing notion, right? The framing notion is you've got a place, you've got Boko Harami growing in that place and the government says one of the ways we can fight this is with economic development. And the question is what economic development? How do we do that? But to set it, I thought I'd go to Mohammed who is actually from Northern Nigeria and has experienced these situations and talk about the reality of why this is so, why urgent steps are needed, why the short-term solutions as well as the long-term solutions are needed. You already said the ball rolling by saying that we should move from generalizations to concrete suggestions on how we should move forward. And as we discussed over the coffee break, for us coming from not only Northern Nigeria, but North Eastern Nigeria, where at the moment there are almost two dozen local governments in Yorbe, Borno and Adamawa states that are currently under occupation by Boko Harami administering this local government and spreading. I think the issue for us is issue of survival as a people. I called the ground the table before the break said, okay, without restoring peace in this sub-region, how are we going to proceed with some of these laudable, concrete short, medium and long-term suggestions that are being bundled around the table? I don't have the answer to that, but what I know is that without some joint effort between all the stakeholders, the federal, the state government, the local government, the communities, as well as our international friends, it would be as time goes on with the correction we have seen in the oil price and already the projections we are seeing for next year, that the situation is going to get worse. Now, military support, Boko Harami, in my opinion, has to be crushed first. And I know military solution alone cannot do that, but military solution is the precast to all other solutions until we get support from our international friends like the United States and other countries to militarily crush them and move ahead with some of these socioeconomic suggestions, it would almost be impossible to stop the spread. And I think we can circle back to the military one, but let's stay within the parameters of this scenario. The Nigerian government has called for economic development. What do you, as the Nigerian government, actually plan to do? Well look, this shows how proactive we are. We've got this, and it shows that we recognize the problem, so what we would like to see happen is the reason we took this step is because we realized that the governor and Kano hasn't been acting on this. We have a number of state governments that we have had trouble with in terms of being proactive. So the federal government thinks that this is the way to go. What we'd like to see are a couple of things. One, we'd like to see for this economic plan to work, we need military assistance. We really need to see, we need to have, it's a crush to the insurgency, but we need to be able to create an environment where businesses can be fostered, where we can attract investment. Two, we need multinational companies. We want to try to get foreign investment because there's a huge consumer base in northern Nigeria. Proctor Gamble just opened up a $300 million factory, and what we want to do is build upon that in the northern area. So we think that that's a key piece of it. And third is that we need the international community. More than the multinationals, we need the European Union, we need the World Bank, we need them to follow through on their promises because there's been a lot of rhetoric about helping us, but we haven't seen a lot of it. You seem to have misunderstood my question, which was what is the Nigerian government going to do? You just listed three things you would like other people to do. There's, what we're doing is clear. Yes, it is. Okay, so long as we've established that, because I think it is clear. So this is your government. This is your government in Abuja, and the action they're taking is calling for somebody else to take action. The northern Nigerian governments, what can you do? I think this question was tossed to Paul Lubeck and myself and maybe a few others who have lived in Kano for many, many, many years. The governor of Kano is running for the president. It will know by next Wednesday he's one of the top three. It's a seat of opposition, so we don't expect anything other than mischief from Abuja. What we do think is that, as the Sultan says many times, no peace, no development. We can do state police and state security, and the governor there is very tough, and the new Emir is very tough, and they will, if given the license, create the security. There's enough money and wealth in Kano itself to bring some of that investment back home. We don't need the outside investors. So you're gonna deploy state police? The governor has created his own Kwon Kwasia militia. The CONFAB last summer, the big national conference, did allow for states to set up, to experiment with state police. Until you get state police and local intelligence, you're gonna have this grassroots vote. So in this context, in the context of the scenario we're talking about, not what's happening, but in the scenario, you're deploying the state police. We will create and deploy very shortly. If we can keep these Abuja people off our back. Kano is the seat of opposition. Okay, how many people is what you'll deploy? Just the ballpark. Well, Kano's state is 12 million. But how many people will you deploy state police? Just the ballpark number. As many as necessary. This is the largest state. You gotta give me a number. Paul, give him a number. You're local Nigerian business interest. For all I know, you're in Boko Haram. Well, that's because you don't understand our culture. The governor has the capacity to create neighborhood associations that one of the preconditions here, that were very popular among Northern Muslims in Kano was the Hizbah. They had some problems with them, but they wanted government, they wanted local government control. That can be cleaned up as a basis for neighborhood community policing, as well as state police. We're talking about a couple of thousand people. The number of militia right now on the ground in the Kwan-Kwasee is 7,000. Right, yeah. That would need to be expanded considerably for a state of 12 million to get really federal state and local police. Is that possible? Is that something you could do? It is a constitutional issue. It was, that's why I mentioned the conference last summer. Insha'Allah. I think it's something that could be interpreted, and we will end up with police. I see real indecision on the part of the local government. The national government is out to lunch. There, no, they're calling for, I'm sorry, we gotta call it like we see it here. How do you view this? So far you've got this response. How do you view it as a target of opportunity? Why? We're on a roll. And we're going to maximize that. What are we going to do? First of all, a full blown assault on the traditional political and religious leadership in Kano. Secondly? Sorry guys, that's you. Secondly? In those parts of the city, which we control, we're going to set up neighborhood Sharia courts, and we are going to provide a higher level of justice and much faster justice than the current system allows for. Third, we are going to set out to destroy all of the judicial institutions that remain in Kano, blowing up courthouses, police stations, and so forth. And finally, we will step up our recruitment of Boko Haram operatives by increasing slightly the signing bonuses that we provide. Did I leave anything here? You guys are, you've clearly got your act together, more so than some other folks. You're the local business interest. Now, you've heard sort of different platforms here of different groups coming into your community. Where do you guys come out and why? And by the way, in the context of the scenario, I want you to be responsive to what you've just heard. Right, I'll try to capture all of them. There needs to be the reestablishment of security using a local governance system. You could revive the district head, ward head system under the brilliant Emir Sinusi, along with a parallel organization under the governor so that knowledge of what's going on in each ward will allow the government and the traditional authorities to cooperate to understand who is there. These cells that are represented to my right can be overcome by proper governance and community control. You're the Nigerian business interest. What are you going to do? Right, the Nigerian business interest, from the point of view of Nigerian businessmen and women, the key function that's needed is the coordination function between the state and associations of business people. There needs to be funding for much better manufacturers association at different levels. There needs to be linkages with agricultural producers to produce raw material, processed food, meat. They need to build on the existing leather industry which produces $700 million of fine leather, mostly goats and sheep. Because it's goats basis, this can be linkage, backward linkages can be created when women in small scale produces the raised incomes. Okay, well that's prescriptive. But what are you going to do? You're the Nigerian business interest. Are you affiliating yourself with Boko Haram? Are you working with the government? What are you doing in this scenario? In this scenario, we will be working primarily with the government in creating associations that will support the increase in capital, credit available for capital. So that some of the states, industrialist states that existed at one time and they were state run in Kano can then be revitalized. That's one. The other is that we as business associations are going to appeal to local producers for raw materials. And many of those are women, but they're also young men and it can provide a large amount of employment for youth in the area. We can set up cluster farming systems for small holders with central food processing or leather processing plants in the communities and with some credit we can improve the inputs of fertilizer and seeds. And we will also work with the LGA government to try to encourage them to invest in better roads for farms to market and also look at the possibility of setting up power plants. Okay, this is right. Power plants take seven years. What's your, in other words, you're all talking very long term. We've got a crisis unfolding as it happens. Just a quick two finger from Boko Haram to explain what we're offering you. We're gonna offer the local business community. Our G-HOD tax is gonna be a flat rate. You can work into your business model. It'll be lower than the exactions you're paying. Our local Sharia courts will deal with the local users. Petty theft from your businesses will stop and you get reliable settlement of contract disputes all for the payment of the nominal, very small and much lower G-HOD tax. Does it that sound better? These guys aren't doing anything. Why wouldn't you be risk, yes, go on, man. I was gonna say, make no mistake about it, we already have some business leaders with us. So we'll continue to peel off as many as we can. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you guys are covering this, right? How'd you cover the Nigerian government's plea for help? Did you cover it at all? Did that appear in any media anywhere? We have A-16. Page 16. A-16, that's up there. Okay, it was buried. And then I think we want our reporter to do two things. One is to talk to the businesses that are cooperating with Boko Haram about why they're doing it and whether they feel any moral, they have any scruples about doing it after all. They know that some of these Boko Haram commanders have Christian girls who are enslaved as their consorts right now. And then as to those of business leaders who are not cooperating with Boko Haram, I think we want our reporters to interview the survivors. The survivors, yeah, okay. Okay, but let me ask one question before we get to that. So, that's the back of the book. They then conduct an attack. Where does that get covered? That's A-1. That's the front of the map. That actually makes it. I just want to bring this up because then I turn to these multinational corporations that they just called for. How do you feel about investing in Northern Nigeria in this circumstance? We don't care about Northern Nigeria. We're in the south, the oil is in the south, but we do care about the overall stability of the Nigerian state so we can do business. So we are interested in, as part of our corporate social responsibility, in getting the government to pony up some money, and we would pony up some money that would work with private NGO or something to do something with Northerners. So we are interested in doing something in the North not because we really care about it, but because we want to be able to do our work. So it's a pittance, it's a gesture. It's like what we're doing in the South in the Niger Delta, which is working with communities and developing leaders and stuff like that. So it's not a pittance, it's millions of dollars. And because it wouldn't be run by the government, it wouldn't be corrupt like everything that the government does. And would it be working with local companies? Local NGOs. With local NGOs. Where are the local NGOs? So what do you do with the money that they're giving you? We have a plan to create a coalition of local NGOs, international NGOs, local businesses who will support us in media. And it consists of three parts. One, together with the governor of Kano and the emir of Kano, we will create a dialogue of these communities to get people to be able to express their grievances too. We will enact legislation that will set up courts that will challenge Boko Haram's anti-corruption narrative. And these will be courts that will be empowered at the state level to deal with corruption, prosecution in a quick way, and to get some resolution of these. And we'll work with their local security forces to protect these courts from being attacked. And the third element is an advocacy campaign to get people to realize that there is an alternative, a rule of law alternative to fighting corruption. This sounds pretty good as far as I'm concerned. I think they're playing right into your hands, right? I mean, they're gonna set up courts which effectively will end up prosecuting some of them and some of them, right? I mean, that'll sort of sell your message, right? Or am I missing something? Go ahead. The difference is our courts are going to be set up tomorrow. They're locally based. It is Boko Haram's supporters who have considerable clout in their local neighborhoods who will be running these courts. And finally, I would say, we're on a roll. Do you want to be on the winning side or not? The Nigerian government would like to speak. Who would you like to ask for help now? Well, first I'd like to say that you're on a roll if you consider slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians to be on a roll or winning. And we certainly don't. We welcome the investment and the training from the multinational corporations. We look forward to loans from the international financial community. But most of all, we do need to provide security. We need to take care of these terrorists. And we need the European Union and the United States to sell us lethal weapons so we can do the job that we need to do. And we need the United States to relax these lehi laws that restrict them from providing us what we need. All right, well, let's explore both of those things. These international loans they speak of. This country has had a lot of money, first of all, but at now seeing its growth prospects curtailed over the course of the next couple of months. Are they gonna get a lot of loans? Do you expect to see cash from the bank and the fund and the African Development Bank pouring in there? Or am I missing something? Just have a quick shot of that. I mean, I think from our side, we were proposing a three-fold approach. First of all, with the IMF, which tends to deal primarily with the central government, looking at the issue of allocation resources from the center to the particular province, whether it's something that could be done to increase that or not. Secondly, from the point of view of the World Bank, African Development Bank, and other international donors, having a two-fold approach, one is looking at what are the policy changes that need to be put in place to try and make reforms in Karno. This is not something that takes very long. It's sitting down with the governor, sitting down with the Amir. What do you need to do about the state-owned enterprises? Are there issues of liberalization of markets? What are the kind of policy changes that you need to make? And you could support that with an international conference where donors, the World Bank, and others put in quick dispersing money, gets money into the state budget quickly, in a sense, buying, if you use a rather crude term, reforms that would make a difference and reforms which the government itself wants to make. And the third side of that would be putting in place programs to support education, health, and in particular community development, coming back to the role of women, as has been done in many countries very successfully, setting up community development committees, for example, was done very successfully in Afghanistan. It gets participation from the local community. There are also longer-term measures that need to be addressed. The energy crisis was one which was raised with us. So I think we could come up with a pretty concrete specific program addressing both short-run and longer-term needs. It didn't sound like loans to me, though. I just want to understand that. They made a request that we, the US government, change its policy. I'd first like to say the United States would like just state a platform to start with. The Cold War has ended. We know the world is a more dangerous place. We know we have a role to play in Northern Nigeria, but that role is limited because our influence with the Nigerian government is limited. To test that, just even being able to train their troops is something they no longer want us to do. So their request for military aid is not gonna happen until we have a better relationship with the Nigerian government. We do know that there's a role we can play now. We can attempt to stop the funding of Boko Haram from the Middle East and other areas. The arrogance of Boko Haram is telling for two reasons. No American business is going to be able to develop in your area. It can't happen. No European business is gonna be able to be there. It can't happen. You will have no development, so you will be bankrupt for the future, and you're so against education that is the ingredient that will make us want to be there. Okay. Did you want to say something quickly? I'm gonna ask everybody to keep it very quick right now. Yeah, we, from the multilateral organizations, recognize the willingness of local Nigerian business organizations to be part of this. But for the larger dangoes of this world, we'll consider using the multilateral investment guarantee agency to try to mitigate some of the risks of revitalizing the textile and oil palm and industries in the North to make it easy for investors. David, the local media has an interjection when we wait for an old man. Yeah, okay. But we'll see if we turn off the TV, but go on. We are in support of the Nigerian civil society and are launching an anti-corruption monitor. We have an anonymous benefactor in the room who is funding us to launch a major anti-corruption monitor called Bring Back Our Money. And we actually are exposing the corruption on some of these anticipated deals in the Nigerian government that of course wants more money to come in. That is gonna go into their pockets. Because there is a long term problem here and we need to better understand the drivers that propel young people to join Boko Haram. We're doing two things in the international media. We're doing a long expose on the role of local Nigerian businesses as Cliff was saying, how they're perhaps benefiting from aligning themselves with Boko Haram, but we're also giving some of these young people who are joining Boko Haram video cameras to film a diary to explain to an international audience why they've joined what it means to them and then we will curate what they've pulled together to try to get a better understanding. Okay. From an international NGO perspective, we're concerned that instead of the government focusing on the underlying problems which are corruption, they're instead focusing on more lethal weapons and aiding and abetting those units that potentially would perpetrate human rights violations. That doesn't bring the population on your side. It just undercuts your legitimacy and we think the name of the game here is reinforcing your legitimacy. We also have significant concerns on the humanitarian assistance side. Yeah, we'd like to point out that there's a- Can I just ask a question as to the scenario, and I'm obviously playing along here, but who cares? Why do we care whether you're concerned? What bearing does that have on the way this plays out? In other words, are you not gonna give some money that you were gonna give? Are you gonna give some money in a different place? I mean, either you're playing or you're commenting. And so the question is, are you just making a comment, which is fine, or is it gonna have an effect? We can't support, if the government doesn't ask or enable certain things to happen, like the anti-corruption reports we mentioned, and put in place that structure, there's nothing for us to support. In order for us to pair with the Nigerian NGOs and civil society and actually counteract what's there, we need the government to at least tacitly agree to that. So we're gonna lobby our donor governments to not to respond to the Nigerian government request for more lethal assistance because of human rights abuses, and we're gonna trust for humanitarian response, which is more important and imperative in the short run than economic assistance programs. We have to deal with the security and the cholera outbreaks. It sounds to me like NGOs are gonna make it harder for other governments to respond. Princeton, quickly then, Peter. Look, this is an important scenario because it's Kano. Kano is a major center. It's got a history of progressivism. So what happens in Kano has an effect on the whole North and North-South relations. We can't get caught up in the fight. As they say in Nigeria, what happens in Kano doesn't stay in Kano. That's right. And the second thing to keep in, two things, we can't get caught up from the European Union, and I would think others, in this political battle between the government and the opposition governor of Kano. That's a thing we can't get caught up in. The third thing is that the business community, we have to remember in Kano is the Nigerian and the Lebanese community. We have to make sure that Boko Ram isn't trying to reach in and create religious and other divisions within the very important business community. What you can do in this circumstance from the European Union and World Bank and others is to come in with short-term funding for the business community, short-term loans. The deindustrialization process has hit Kano very badly. You can't overcome that in the short-term, but I think part of it has to be assuring that power plants and other things will be coming to Kano. Okay, and we're gonna come back to that in the next scenario, which is gonna begin in a minute. In the meantime, we've reached out to the media, invited a member of the media to come and witness one of our commercial dispute settlements in Asharia courts, as well as the member of the media and perhaps an international NGO to visit a mass grave we've discovered on the edge of Kano from victims of the civilian joint task force. Okay, yeah, very quickly. Just a question for our friends in Boko Haram. If I, as an editor, were to send Ace reporters, Matt and Kim, into your area, will you cooperate with them or will you kill them? We'd be very happy to show them our courts and the mass grave we dug up. That was a pretty ambiguous answer. Yes, go. Thank you, thank you. Our countries are really deeply affected by this threat and we'd like a seat at the table. You have a seat at the table, let me ask you. Primarily, we want to point out that containment should be the major goal of the international community. We are somewhat of mixed opinion on this subject, but we're not entirely confident that a military solution is possible. We think that we need arms to defend our borders. We need development projects to prevent recruitment from within our citizenry. And we want to emphasize our willingness to continue our dialogue with Boko Haram in the interest of promoting a peaceful solution. First of all, I'm sure they appreciate it. Secondly, I was gonna actually turn to you guys as the last voice in this, because I wanted to say, as you listen to all of this, this is on your doorstep. And based on what you've just heard, do you feel more secure or less secure? Is this a growing problem for you, or do you think they've got their arms around it? I think we feel less secure, because... I'm glad you're paying attention. Nigeria is the big kid on the block, and if Nigeria goes down with its population of 170 million, the rest of our countries are going to go down as well. Kano is a historic city, and many of the Muslim populations in our respective countries do have a historical attachment to Kano. And while the issue was being dealt with in three other states, Bono, Yabe, and Adamawa, it wasn't as dire as is now the case with the extension into Kano. So we're very worried about refugees coming across the border. We're also worried about internally displaced populations within our respective countries. And we're worried about the fact that even if this crisis is resolved, the ripple effects on the economies of our own countries will be felt for the medium to long term. Okay. And if I could just add, we're very concerned and viewed with a great deal of consternation in the events of the last few years. And so we have lost confidence in Nigeria's ability to come to a resolution. And therefore we are now contemplating that perhaps we should have direct talks with Boko Haram that do not include the government in Nigeria. Okay, interesting. And we'll have to pick that up in the next one. Mohamed, this really is the last word. Okay, so the United Nations won't do anything without our member states coming to us and asking us to do anything. But we are going to report. You could have just finished with the United Nations won't do anything, but go on. Well, no, no, what we will do is we're going to report on the atrocities that we expect Boko Haram to undertake now. We're going to report on the numbers of displaced people and perhaps the courts that we expect they'll be setting up. And hope that our member states will either through the Security Council or through other cooperation with this information do something about the situation. We'll also, obviously we have a number of our agencies that have programs in Nigeria, whether it's on their long-term programs of women's empowerment or family planning or combatting corruption. We're going to market those. We're going to use the call for economic development to get funding from different countries and from different member states to support those programs. Okay, helpful. George, last word in this. Yeah, I just know the question on the table was we've got an appeal for economic assistance, urgent economic assistance in Kano to help bolster economic improvement there. And as I listened to the conversation, I have yet to hear anybody come up with specific concrete reactions, responses to that question. How, what if anything can be done on an economic plane? That would be responsive A to the request that's been made, but also- Thank you. That would address the issues of countering Boko Haram. Who said thank you? The Nigerian government. Oh, the Nigerian. Thank you. Thank you. Last word. No, thank you. I think it's an important point. And I think that it's something that we should very briefly. Well, I think, Ambassador, I think your point is valid. But on direct talks with the Nigerian government, we found that the request was hollow and that their real request, again, was for security and legal force. And so, you know, where do you go? You're back where you started. No, look, George's point is extremely important in the context of the scenario as we move forward. We need to look for these things. I think there have been a number of offers of differing types, which, by the way, have the ring of truth to me, whether it was how the Nigerians responded, how the local government responded, how Boko Haram responded, how the NGOs and local businesses. This kind of feels roughly what would happen, which is to say, not much in the way of concrete action on the ground, advances by you, the situation deteriorates. We move to the next slide, which says Boko Haram attacks recently restarted factories, as was indicated here. And there's a, you know, Twitter feed, which is how most of us, you know, get our analysis. So, you know, economic development projects targeted in the attack launched by Boko Haram, 77 killed, 160 injured. Two recently restarted textile factories in a livestock processing facility where the main targets for UN aid workers were killed in these attacks. And the goal here is to develop a response to the attacks that ensures continued delivery of economic assistance. Well, there isn't a lot of economic assistance, but to develop a response. We've now sort of seen the thing ratchet up because the response was not hyper effective in combating what they were doing. It didn't turn the back. So take five minutes, talk among yourselves, and then we will resume with how you play this situation moving forward. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we'll begin in two minutes. If you would finish up your conversations, we'll begin in two minutes. All right, we'll begin in one minute. If everybody could be making your way back towards your seats, that would be great. Are there a lot of people? All right, ladies and gentlemen, would you take your seats and we will begin. So, here's the situation. We are in a state that is extremely important that has implications not just within Nigeria, but for the region. We have seen within this state an expansion of the influence and violence of Boko Haram. It clearly takes a difficult situation and it puts it at further risk. And so we wanna see what kind of concrete responses along the lines of those that George was referring to might actually be taken. Who, among the various groups represented at this table actually has a strong interest in seeing some kind of action taken to counteract this. Okay, well, out of respect. Let's start with the Nigerian government. Well, thank you. Nobody has a greater interest in seeing for the welfare of the people of Kano than the Nigerian government. And let me point out that in the last scenario we heard from Boko Haram on how they wanna bring justice and security to Kano. And this is evidence that they wanna do anything but that, that all they wanna do is slaughter, they wanna impair security, they wanna impair justice, and they wanna impair economic development. We have decided today with the cooperation of the National Assembly to extend the state of emergency to Kano State. And we have deployed the 143rd Battalion, newly trained by the United States to Kano immediately to support that effort. We've also taken steps to completely reformulate our counter-terrorism policy. We've built a new whole of government response to terrorism that includes both soft and hard tools. We have a CVE policy that will reform all the Magiri in the North and there will also work to promote a large counter-narrative campaign on all the radio stations in Kano. The local government feel about this. What is the response that you've got to this situation? The highly respected Emmy of Kano has just called on the people to wake up, to arm themselves, to defend themselves against them. Due to the inability of Abuja to protect us. Now, from time immemorial, the Emirate system in the North has a hierarchical structure of the Emea, the district heads, the village heads, the ward heads. And in that hierarchical order, they have always had some form of local policy, the dogeri system, which has also been affected over the years has become more abundant from Emirates due to lack of action, lack of funding and so on. They used to be extremely effective. Now, I think we are going to revive them in line with the call of the Emea for our people to stand up and defend ourselves. In doing that, we will work hand in hand with our state government, who have also been calling on Abuja to allow them to establish the state police force like you have in other countries. So the joint effort of the Emirate system or the Emirates together with the state government will be able to provide a strong policing at the local level. But in order to counter those guys over there, we have seen the success of the vigilantes in Adama State in my state. Up until two, three weeks ago, Boko Haram has swept across five local governments, which is one senatorial district of Northern Adama. But with the mobilization of the vigilante groups who have special charms with their den guns working hand in hand with the military, they were able to recapture some of those local governments and they are making a lot of progress, clearing them from Northern Adama into Borno and hopefully out of that. So while you have the vigilante groups armed by the state, monitored by the state, what they have given them uniforms in Adama, military fatigue, they're also giving them photo IDs by the military. Are you proposing to do this in this scenario in an Iran kind of? Yeah, because the security is number one as far as we are concerned. All these economy models will not work until we are able to secure our communities and you have had what they have said. Thank you. Okay, well we've heard now what the governments have said they are gonna do. To those of you on the economic side or the NGO side, think that these steps that are being taken are enough to encourage more investment. Well we've been talking, our associations have been talking very closely with the state government and we do believe that if the state police are posted near our areas, combined with the vigilantes, we will be able to secure a number of our facilities and factories. Now our concern is the outlying supply chain, the provision of the goats and leather, the provision of the foodstuffs and so on that are going to be processed. That will require some local policing, we believe, and the vigilantes may or may not be appropriate that we'll have to be foreseen. But in any case, our war development committee can meet and decide who we can recruit and how we can expand and diffuse their activities so that the various farms and locations of production can be protected. For us, the protection of our assets and our personnel are of the utmost importance and at this time we feel that that is impossible to do in northern Nigeria, we will focus our efforts on the south and until we can be guaranteed safety and security of our assets and our personnel, we will not be investing. Yeah. Sadly, since we've lost 10 aid workers on the NGO community, we'll have to pull back our expat presence in Kano and other insecure areas until security is re-established. We'll be relying on local staff and local partners to try and continue to deliver humanitarian services and do economic livelihood programs. Yeah. The business association met and came out for the importance of the rule of law in the face of these conflicts. The important goal is to restart negotiations that were listed very clearly in the Chatham House report and our goal is to eventually move to de-radicalization programs and amnesty in the spirit in which President Jonathan used to bring Tampolo into the Niger Delta to guard the pipelines. And we'd also like to have an indictment of a former governor of a Borneo state, Sharif. The Nigerian NGOs feel that too much emphasis is being laid on protection of international business and call upon the state government to devote their resources to protecting the population, the general population. Ms. Boko Haram, if they are frustrated in attacking some of the economic factories, we'll switch to civilian targets. So we need to make sure that the population centers are protected, civilians are protected, the international business can hire their own security. So in an absence of a scarcity of resources, there should be definitely, together with the traditional mechanisms that were referred to before, measures to protect the population and particularly schools and hospitals, et cetera. Well, here's a message that I'm getting from all of this and so I'm gonna turn to our colleagues from Boko Haram to help clarify things for me. But what I'm sort of getting from all of this is that the response, with the escalation of attacks, you have the pullout of the international NGOs. We have the pullout of any interest at all from multinational corporations. You have the state and local governments saying the response needs to be a security response. Neither one of them has talked about any importance of economics. This seems to suggest that you're gonna have a significant downturn in the economic conditions in this place, growing unemployment and so forth. Is it, am I wrong in thinking that this creates a recruitment opportunity and the chance for a Boko Haram to grow? Because we seem to, I mean, the way this scenario is going is we're talking about economic responses and the first response of everybody is, well, it's not really the economics that matter, but do they? Several things from Boko Haram. First, we point out to everyone that the attacks which occurred in areas that we did not control, our zones are peaceful and orderly. Secondly, the factories attack were factories that declined an invitation to pay a reasonable flat Jihad tax to us. Thirdly, we're going to give an interview on which we will highlight the fact that the factory owners were close collaborators and in fact involved in corruption with the folks in Abuzia and the central government. And finally, in the zones in which we are controlled, not only is it orderly, but we've not only and recruiting people through our signing bonuses from the last round, we've initiated trash pickup schemes and other things which create small time employment, but certainly some opportunities for some people who otherwise had no services provided to them or no income generation. Okay, but now would you respond to my question? Well, since this area has over the last few years declined in economic opportunities, the closure of textiles and leather, in many respects, anything we do actually adds to productivity, cleaning up the streets, giving order to businesses and in fact represents an improvement in the experience of ordinary Nigerians than what they've had in the previous few years of so-called democracy. Right, but what happens is when you have that decline, the price you have to pay in order to recruit those people actually goes down. All you have to do is give them a little bit. It actually makes you easier to recruit and it costs you less. Is that correct or am I? Definitely, that's why we continue on our role. Yeah, they continue on their role, yes. Everything we heard was nefarious, double-speak and these people should be banished. Thank you. Kim, are you applying for assignment in another country or? So yeah, I've always wanted to cover Nigeria. This is my chance. So unfortunately, although there were some, you know, lots of breaking news on the Twitter feed and I am in the region, this item did not make the front page and it did not make the evening news on the BBC. So I have negotiated with my editors that because it is important to cover the story properly and in-depth, I will go on an embed with Boko Haram for one week. I have received written guarantees that... I think Kim is saying she's about to leave. She's leaving the peace game. I've received written guarantees that they will guarantee my safety. My editors are thinking about it and discussing it with the insurance company. But I have agreed with my editors. Well, first of all, with Boko Haram, I've agreed that I can be with them for a week, that I will get one extensive interview with one of their local leaders. I will be accompanied by local journalists at all times. But with my editors, we've also heard what the Northern Nigerian government has said and we understand that there are starting to be murmurs of dissent against Boko Haram. We've heard about the vigilantes. And we're going to do a two-part interview to try to shed light as well on how the local population is starting to push back against Boko Haram. It will be a two-part documentary that will air after I leave the region. And we are looking to partner with local media as well so that what we get in terms of access can also be translated into a better understanding for the local population, but how some of the people in the community are starting to push back in the hope that it also empowers them to feel that this is not, you know, the end will be all for them when it comes to Boko Haram. Yeah. Look, you can't turn the situation around just on economics now because it's where it is at. But if there is seriousness about a local police force, the European Union has played a role in training police forces and prepared to do so. But you can't walk away from the economic situation. And I think more has to be done to provide long, long guarantees and protection for the business community to keep working on the economic issues, but the security has to come with it. And does the international financial community get to back that up? Because most of our programs and projects in the region are delivered by our implementing partners, those projects and programs will continue such as the youth employment and local governance projects that started three or four months ago, which will continue for the next four or five years. So those remain uninterrupted. Those local businesses that were large enough to receive MIGA support will continue to receive that, but it will be difficult to grant additional guarantees given the security context today. But isn't it true that in a situation like this, more economic aid at a moment of crisis would actually be called for as opposed to less and seeing it wind down if you wanted to produce a positive result? Yeah, let me just draw an example from Afghanistan because I think it's quite similar. The Taliban launched a number of attacks against girl schools in the East. And one would have expected to see a sort of snowball effect as the girls schools close. In fact, there was a lot of dialogue that took place fostered in part by the government between the local community and the Taliban to the Taliban to understand that in fact, this was something to keep these schools open was really important to the local community. Ultimately, the Taliban did not wanna piss off the local community, the community wanted to win them over. And in fact, most of these schools eventually got reopened. So one of the things we haven't talked about here is the dialogue that takes place between the community and Boko Haram, for example, in the case of somebody opening a factory or reopening a factory. Is it really in the interest of the community to keep that factory going? Is the factory essentially predatory or is it something that really is gonna benefit the community? If it's gonna benefit the community, can you get a dialogue going which makes it in the interest, even a Boko Haram, not to close this down? I mean, it's not an instant answer. But again, our goal here is not development. Our goal is counter extremism. So we, I mean, while it is important to deal with development issues in a different context, what we wanna focus on here are measures that will counteract them, which is a different kind of thinking. Raymond. Yes, we recognize that fall in economic development levels across the board could play into Boko Haram's hands. It might facilitate recruitment and cause communities to be disaffected. But we also acknowledge the complexity of the value chain and the political economy in the North. So we don't want to just have money going into the North that would be siphoned out to the leaders of Boko Haram and their proxies in the business community. So what do you want? What we do, what we want is to have businesses feel, have a sense of trust and take charge of the opportunity that present itself. And specifically what we would do is we would, through our governance program in the World Bank, we will play a catalytic role and get a partnership meeting together. So we'll have the business partners, the multinationals, and we would chart a way forward to ensure that not just economic assistance, but investment flows are not disrupted because of the attacks. Dolores. The Secretary General has before condemned attacks of Boko Haram, but certainly does so in the most uncertain terms given the fact that aid workers have been killed and we will have no recourse, but to pull UN aid workers out of this area, given the security situation, which unfortunately will only exacerbate the economic circumstances that are now fueling the Boko Haram crisis. Chad holds the presidency right now of the Security Council. So even though the UN must wait at all times to respond to the will of its members, we can encourage the presidency to hold a special or call a special session of the Security Council to discuss the deteriorating security situation in the area. The area. Okay, yes. So we have a very clear view on extremism. We're very good to fighting this. We have been doing this in other places. I think the main problem that we see is that these guys over here and these guys over here can't seem to get along. And I think Boko Haram has a great advantage in diversifying and breaking, kind of in utilizing these kind of structures between the local and the state government. And we're gonna provide the customary six or seven figure number just to make sure that we are echoing our commitment here, but we would like to see a much stronger united front against Boko Haram, behind which we can really rally and provide much, much more substantial resources. So you would offer resources to do economic development provided there was cooperation from local governments in combating Boko Haram. Absolutely, yes. Yeah. We also see this as part of a much larger struggle. And for example, if you read what the Kano businessman said the reason why he went over to Boko Haram, he said first of all, because they were better at anti-corruption. The second point he made, which has not been mentioned at all, is because the purity of Islam that they're teaching, which is not economic. And we see this as a struggle throughout the region. And if you look at the religious leadership in our countries, from Egypt to Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, they have been vociferous in saying that these people are not good Muslims. And we believe that that's an essential element of any struggle against Boko Haram. Okay, we've got to move this along. I want to turn to the expert panel to ask for some reactions in one second. I want to go back to the neighboring countries, again on whose doorstep this falls and who play a kind of a local judge role on what we've just heard. But when I listen to what we've just heard, it's essentially the situation has ratcheted up. The economic conditions have deteriorated for a variety of factors associated with, all they have to do is blow up a couple of factories, press covers it, the international multinationals pull out. There's some aid workers killed, some of those programs get dialed back. The focus of the government becomes security as opposed to dealing with the economic crisis. Recruitment grows. And I start wondering, are we at the point where, since our goal is the best possible outcome, that we have to cordon off and contain this, that you have to cordon off and contain it because it's not getting fixed from within and that you have to identify the places they haven't gone and try to deal with the right kind of economic and security conditions there? Or am I misinterpreting it? I think you read our notes because we have agreed that contentment should be priority. We have reached out to the United States and are willing to accept the training and equipment for our troops. We are willing to comply with the Leahy amendment. But we also want to have this done in a way that doesn't provoke Nigeria because they're the big hit on the block. We also would like to reach out eventually to international NGOs to help us with the refugee crisis as people continue to flee Nigeria into the neighboring countries. Okay, and that's important and we should come to that in a second. Do those of you listening to this have a reaction? It's a little depressing that the reaction is not, let's fix this part of the world, but maybe the realistic answer is contain, isolate. That creates leverage with the government to clean up their act and perhaps then you'll get there. Do you have a reaction beyond that? I think what I take away from this is both in terms of the first move but also now in terms of the second move, there don't seem to be many economic responses that are either workable or that would have an impact in this particular setting. And so, yes, in that sense, it is depressing but what I guess it does is sort of shift us forward to say, okay, if they're not economic responses when we look at it this afternoon, are there other kinds of responses that would make more sense? We've had allusions to the need to engage local organizations and build local militias or whatever we want to call them, military assistant organizations. So I guess if what it suggests is that we shouldn't spend a lot of time talking about the economic parts of this, we ought to be moving forward to the next part of the scenario. Please don't give up with George on our last move. We've still got a half an hour to go. Johnny, give it a little life here, but you don't have to. I will try to. First of all, economics and social opportunity do matter. One of the drivers of the problems in the North are both political and economic marginalization. The lack of opportunity, great unemployment among youth, the inability to move the economy forward. And in fact, we've seen enormous deindustrialization across. If we're going to try to stop the current role that Boko Haram is on, we also must include a comprehensive strategy that deals with economic and social marginalization. I think the thing that has most impressed me in the first two moves is the absence and lack of genuine creativity on the part of the business community, on the part of the international financial community, and on the part of the NGOs to find ways to reach out and collaborate with willing partners and to try to build up progressively counter narratives that in real terms to what Boko Haram is putting in place, the reason they're able to recruit is that Boko Haram also gives them both political and psychological status, but also money in their pockets. And I would challenge those who are in the international community, if they're at the ify's, those who are in the NGO community and those who are in the business sector to help find a way to create jobs, create opportunities, and to provide at least some zones or ACs of economic promise that no longer exist. This is a really, really important point because we can give up. You know, we can say, okay, the economics isn't going to matter and just sort of coast through the next thing, or we can do what the idea of peace game is to do, which is to try and be creative. I'm not saying that everybody here hasn't been exactly realistic in what is likely to happen, but what we wanna do now is go and push it a step and say, how creative can you be within the realm of possibility? What's a possibility that somebody isn't considering that could get the multinational corporations in there? What's a possibility that people, well, we're not gonna get to the next move and then you can answer it, but what's a possibility that would get the IFIs in there or get international governments involved, get local businesses to do something? Please, let's make the focus, we only have a half hour left in this, let's make the focus of the last move, creativity, coming up with new ideas, not being constrained simply by what has happened in the past, but by thinking about what might be possible in the future. The next move, the final move is, a Nigerian bank is accused of financing Boko Haram and laundering funds. The UN calls for an international response. Reports emerge today that the Nigerian capital, in the Nigerian capital that a major bank used by international businesses, development organizations, governments, been laundering Boko Haram funds and helping finance the group. The UN spokesperson called on Nigerian and the countries around the world to respond to the recent news. So we wanna talk about how do you restrict the flow of funds to Boko Haram as well as dealing with these other economic issues? It's a new piece thrown into the puzzle, okay? I'm gonna have to really limit this break to just five minutes. It's right now a quarter of, so at 10 of we're gonna move into the next move, but please, creativity, I'm gonna only turn to people who have new ideas here. Okay, thank you. Give me to the, Daniel, give me to the unlimited evidence. No, no, no, I wasn't, I wasn't gonna switch up. Okay, maybe I misunderstood. No, no, no, no, no, no. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to begin in two minutes. So please finish up and head back to your seats. Would everybody please take their seats? So, we're getting to an important point in any scenario exercise, and that's the point where everybody realizes the limitations of the scenario. And it's important to acknowledge that this is a point you get into in any scenario exercise. And there's several ways that one encounters this. For example, we've talked a lot about security here, and it would make perfect sense to have an entire scenario focused on the security issues. But we had a limited amount of time, and we thought we'd focus on a couple of issues. And since the focus is, you know, peace game, that we thought we would focus on the issues where one could counter extremism without military action, even though we know that military action is extremely important, or counter insurgency is really important. And so that's one area, and we have to sort of recognize that and work within the context of it. As we said at the dinner last night, there are lots of drivers of extremism. We're only gonna talk about a couple of them here today. The second is that within the confines of the scenario, there is a kind of a desire to respond to the situation of the scenario. But if there is no best possible outcome, or if there is no good outcome, then the best possible outcome might be longer term progress, as opposed to shorter term progress. You were making this point to me, Chris. Perhaps you could make it in 60 seconds. I would just like to make the point to everyone that to me, the issue between being realistic and being creative, if we were realistic over the last so many years, we wouldn't have been making the mistakes that we've been making. And so I came originally thinking military force, yes. I did the research that you all sent. I said, no, that's not gonna be it. And then I thought, well, where I'm coming now, because I wanna be realistic is, our problem is with this government. And we have got to collectively all figure out how we get a change in this government, because most of the creative things we wanna do won't happen unless we get buy-off from the government. That's one perspective. But you might wanna add your perspective too, Patrick, because no, no, I think it's an important perspective, but... What I was able to do in that break there was fly in Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton to broker a meeting between the locals and the central government. And AU came in and helped monitor that. They may have some points on the outcome of that meeting. But I also managed to get approval from Congress to reprogram $50 million to start a pot to create a technical education and jobs program. We're gonna open training academies in the North. The Nigerian government agreed to match that, at least match that. I got agreement from the multinational companies that they would employ these youth that we're gonna recruit and train there in the North. So we're making progress. I think there's some more people on the fence. How many people can you train with? You know, we can train, at a monthly training, you know, if it's a month, sort of a month or two month long, we can train 500 kids a month. That's our initial goal. Well, indeed, we welcome this unusual offer of cooperation from the United States. But yes, during the... What's so unusual about it? They offered to train your troops. But, well, that's another story, I guess. Too many conditions. But no, I'm very, I'm delighted, indeed, to announce the good luck plan. We had a very successful meeting with the Northern Governors Association and with local Nigerian business interests and have come up with a infrastructure and job creation program across Northern Nigeria that we will fund in part using our infrastructure funds from the fuel subsidy program that's been relaxed. And we will look to gradually reduce the fuel subsidies in the future to create, to free up further funds. And the Northern Governors have agreed to support us politically with this important development for the country. We welcome the U.S. offer of $50 million to create a youth training program. It's gonna be focused on practical skills and we have ways to put those people to work for the benefit of Northern Nigeria right away. Like, sort of, getting out the boat for the February election? Yeah. Well, we'd like to just... We'd also like to note that while we respect the U.S.'s wishes of dealing with a constitutional monarchy or military dictatorship, we are a democracy and we have to work with those constraints that we have. And we do have an election coming up. So the other thing we wanted to mention is that, you know, part of this is that, as our national security advisor just noted, we're action-oriented, right? We wanna get this done. And so we're looking really to sort of see what it is and we don't wanna talk about doing things. We wanna see what is it that our international partners, because this case behind us, in front of us, clearly shows that we need designations. This goes beyond our mandate. I mean, we need a much larger, international community has to shut down the banks that are funding this from the outside. We have to do designations on families where the money's coming from. We need support and we can't do this alone. What can we do to shut down the banks? What can we do, Jim, to put pressure on the funding for Boko Haram? Lean forward and... It's one situation if you've got a banking, a bank that is plugged into the international community. We have means that we've demonstrated many times, at least the United States and the international community, the UN, various tools to do that. Otherwise, if it's a bank that is under the control of the Nigerian government and doesn't have an international posture, you're left at the devices of the Nigerian government to do whatever you can. But at least in the case of this scenario here, this bank is plugged into the international community. And so one does have the ability to put some pressure on the funding for Boko Haram. I mean, to the extent that it is plugged into the international community, again, as you know, the Treasury Department is capable of essentially shutting down, not only its activities, but any other bank in the world that would deal with it, and that essentially closes down, typically, it puts it out of business as an international player and most banks don't wanna see that happen, so they cut whatever ties they have with whatever group. Actually, one of the most effective things that we've talked about today, I think. Done. Because you said that. No. No, no. Because you asked the right question. Okay, okay, great. Johnny. Let me just add that the U.S. government in two different measures has placed individuals as well as Boko Haram on the foreign terrorist organization list. Their presence on that list gives the U.S. government the legal leverage to undertake both political and economic sanctions against those individuals and those institutions that are supporting them. And will the EU go along with this? You're the EU, Prince. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, we've done that in the past on other situations of shutting down financing of those banks and bank operations and putting sanctions into place and there are international structures for doing that. So the African Union was referenced earlier. You've been quiet in the previous two moves, so what are you doing here? First I want to take exception. I think that in this case it's obvious that the international community is as guilty perhaps as the Nigerian government in regulating this bank. The donors, the international business, they're all involved in this bank and thus supporting in some way or fashion the ability of Boko Haram to find funding. I think it needs to be reviewed across the spectrum of actors who are reinforcing the ability of Boko Haram to operate. The African Union is monitoring the situation very, very closely and welcomes the attention of the international community in all of these areas. That was very realistic. I know. We welcome the US government's intervention and think that not only an envoy from the US government but a distinguished African elder would facilitate a more serious and earnest dialogue among the parties. I mean, great. So we have the finance minister of Boko Haram about to speak, so. So when we first, these reports first emerged, we thought it was an attempt by the Nigerian government to impugn our credentials as a force against corruption in Nigeria, but we did launch our own internal investigation of these allegations that we were using in un-Islamic. Banking system to launder funds. And what we did find an element within our organization who had been engaging in these un-Islamic practices. And shortly we will be posting video of the trial and execution of that number. And we are restating our commitment to Islamic banking practices and our commitment against corruption in Nigeria. Well, let me ask you a question in terms of your own internal meetings. Okay, this is not your public statements, which are tedious and as bad as theirs. But in terms of internally, shutting down the banking, getting these guys putting sanctions on some of these flows of international funds, coming up with, I don't know, $100 million for training and some other programs in this area. Does it squeeze you at all really? I mean, in private meetings, I'm not talking about your public stance, how does this affect your operations? Go ahead. It doesn't really affect them. Because fundamentally, we're not interested in economic development. We're interested in the creation of God's kingdom on earth through justice for the poor by means of the enforcement of Sharia law. That's what we're interested in. We don't care about what the international banking system does. Okay, well, this is clearly the ideological department of the Boko Haram. But Peter, you're in charge of recruitment. And you have to face recruitment and you're in charge of operations and you gotta look at what's in the bank account. How does this affect you guys? Well, it begins to affect us. So we have to, we've taken measures which we're not free to disclose, but we've taken measures. Well, you can tell us, we're friends. Well, I think maybe the neighboring countries might wanna weigh in. Yeah, go ahead. Well, we note, of course, the desire to impose sanctions on this bank, but we would want to understand very clearly if that bank has branches in any of our countries, but has shareholders in any of our countries. And we would certainly insist on sanctions being imposed in a targeted manner so that it does not negatively affect economic growth in our country. And then the second point I'd just like to note, we've noticed with a great deal of interest because of the deteriorating security situation that international aid agencies, organizations, NGOs, and multinational corporations are now preparing to leave Northern Nigeria. We would like to invite them to consider relocating in any of our three countries and we would be happy to offer them a very warm welcome. Thank you. Thanks. Okay, we've got literally just five, six minutes here. So I'm gonna go around the room and I'm gonna ask you for 30 to 60 seconds, but what I'd really like you to focus, I mean, no more publicity statements, communicates that you're issuing. If you've got something concrete that you think of as a fairly creative idea that can actually help address the situation and produce the best possible outcome, we wanna hear it. Princeton? Look, I've been talking to the Corporate Council and other business communities. There's a lot of things you can do economically in the short term and you can put up a power plant in three months. You could put up power plants, you've got a railroad that goes, lay goes to Kano, you could jumpstart a lot of the industries, you could start public works projects, you could contribute to that as well as other donors. So jumpstarting some of the economic activity is not a long-term proposition. There are long-term things to do, but the idea that you can't do anything significant in the short term is not true and power is so vital to the industrial refinancing of reindustrialization. That plus other things with the business community could begin to have a, not only an impact, but provide some hope in the community that things are gonna come back. Okay, that's very helpful. Is Power Africa gonna send any of its funds to this since it's got all these billions of dollars committed? But yes, okay, Power Africa. Okay, very briefly, we're really going for constructive solutions. Actually, the constructive solution, the reason I point to the neighboring countries is the fact is that if you're going to do economic development or anything in Northeastern Nigeria, it makes a lot more sense to go through the neighboring countries than to run through Abuja. And that's the reason we had moved our banking operation to those branches on the neighboring countries, and that's why the neighboring countries are hectoring for sanctions on Nigeria. See, now that was half constructive. Half of that was very constructive. Yes, go on, Liam. But quickly, we've gotta get around the whole table here. Very quickly, operations are gonna get expensive if we keep kind of expanding and expanding because the networks that are able to create the safe... Leave forward a little bit of work. The networks that would be able to create safe corridors to have the types of attacks in places that are outside of our base of operations requires a lot of money to grease the skids. And we will feel a financial squeeze if we don't keep up our profits as well. And so we will feel it. That's very helpful. All right, go on, Kate. So as members of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition, we'd like to remind everyone that we need laws that require public disclosure of all business entities, banks, corporations, charities, trust foundations, not just in Nigeria, not just in the West, in the neighboring countries as well, so we can continue to put the squeeze on Boko Haram financially. Okay, that's a constructive statement. The businessmen, business owners in Northern Nigeria wish to point out that this financial problem really doesn't affect the Northern business community because they have been marginalized from the banking system when it was restructured about 10 years ago. Most of the banks are not controlled by Northern Nigerians. The really important innovation is to provide Sharia-compliant credit linked to micro-credit systems. We all have to remember that the Green Bank was invented by a Bangladeshi Muslim. Okay, very quickly. Well, the business community needs to speak because this is an economic issue. We strongly endorse and welcome this $50 million program from the US government to do youth training. We will be happy as a Northern business community to absorb the trainees. In addition, we look forward to the Nigerian government's program to do a works project in infrastructure. To kickstart, as Princeton said, the economic activity of the area, again, we would be happy to provide technical support to any organization that would like to also, through the Shure Pee, which is a few subsidy program, which is a very large fund at the federal level, to start businesses and enterprises in the North and to provide credit for those businesses. Okay, the media will add nothing about it. No, no, the media will always speak because we own the megaphone. Speak for 30 seconds, you understand? Now, speaking from the home office and from the Wall Street Journal, I mean, as a story, we need to check it out. We appreciate Kim's enthusiasm, but there is, we think, something deeper here. It's also prize season, and I think there's possibly a really good investigative story on terror financing, and you gotta dig in Nigeria, but also dig in the US with Treasury to see what they know, and it has to sort of speak to a bigger piece of how do you stop money from flowing to these groups. Okay, anybody got anything constructive here? That's so unlikely. Look, if this really matters, and I'm not just talking about rhetoric and on paper, on social media, and people holding up signs with all due respect to the First Lady, I would say that you have to have a coalition of governments against Boko Haram. You get people to contribute money, resources, it has to be a coalition just like we have against Daesh and ISIL. That's how you get movement on this. Okay, Michelle. Being members of the coalition against ISIL, are you comparing yourself to the Assad regime in this scenario because the main problem that we have with forming a coalition in Nigeria is lack of leadership of the government. There are great ideas from the European Union that we echo and we could totally come in and equal those funds that are committed. $5 million, $50 million from the US is also great, but again, if an Nigerian government and the local governments in the North cannot work together, then all of this money and all of these commitments and all of this assistance that can come in very quickly, actually, I believe, is not really gonna materialize. So really the ball is in your court. Michelle, what is the UAE prepared to do? What is the UAE prepared to do? You're speaking to me, the media. The media, what is the UAE prepared to do? The UAE is prepared to come in as an economic partner of the European Union proposal which we find is very constructive. Okay, by the way, I think there's several things bubbling up here that can actually turn into something, but I think one of the things that might be extrapolated from Peter's point is some of the economic development should go into Northern Nigeria. Some of the economic development should go into the neighboring countries to ensure that you don't have the spread of extremism out of this region of Northern Nigeria. And so some of it's prophylactic, some of it's dealing with the immediate crisis. Very, very briefly, we're running out of time. Yes, the government of the state of Kano never believes anything in Puch, particularly if it's reported from Abuja. Point one, point two, the Boko Haram people have already blown up the banking question to show that they don't use that banking system. Now we've cleared the decks. We want the Marshall Plan that has been mentioned by distinguished American diplomats. We want the consulate. There's never a Marshall Plan. There will never be another one. Forget about that. We want the Kano. We need a consulate there to facilitate this. And then we'll, of course, need the security to go along with it. Boko Haram is not on a roll. We're going to clean house in Abuja after February 14. OK, Raymond. Yeah, just quick, specific speaking to the move. I want to continue the delivery of economic assistance. Firstly, mobile banking to ensure that the economic operators could still receive their money even though the bank that they did business through might go down. Secondly, enhanced banking supervision to prevent contagion and to limit their fallout because we want to ensure that the international businesses, international NGOs, could still bring their money in and support investment in the north. Last, brief word, Nick. Yeah, I just actually want to come back to the summary that was made of the last session. I just want to say I disagree very strongly with the summary that was made that economic development is not importance, not going to work. OK, yeah, no, but I'm sort of saying nothing specific has come up. I mean, I think there are lots of specific things that have come up. I mean, I think from this side, we've also talked about policy-based operations and the like, education, health, social protection, community development, all of these things can be done. But the point I would like to leave you with is, there are no silver bullets. I mean, there have been lots of good minds working in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere. It is a long grind and you've got to be prepared for the long grind and thinking that there are sort of instant things which are going to magically transform a state and magically knock over, buck over arm is not going to happen. You've got to think of this as a long term commitment. OK, I don't think anybody can disagree with that. We've come to the end of this particular session. I do think that in this last round, there have been some specific things which are not magic bullets, but may actually advance us toward the goal of improving the situation to a degree, whether that is identifying sources of financing, tracking them, trying to cut them off, better banking regulation, international cooperation to do that, that's one area. If it's programs, even small training programs where the United States can get together and try to do something with the local government, that is something that could be constructive in this regard. I think a very important point is that if our objective is to contain extremism, it's harder to make economic grounds in a place where the flames are licking at every industry. It's easier to use economics as a tool in places that have yet to have crossed the line. And so in the neighboring states, supporting development, supporting job creation in places to keep things from spreading there also seems to be extremely constructive. We don't disconnect it from security because we know that that's got to be involved in this. We also don't disconnect it from long term development issues because ultimately, unless you educate women, unless you deal with public health, unless you deal with public education issues, unless you deal with infrastructure issues, you can't actually have sustained organic economic growth. If you don't have that, you can't improve the condition. And remember, we're talking about a country which despite its enormous gains in wealth has roughly two thirds of the people living in poverty. And so you have to address that as a core issue. I think there are other things that we could have talked about a little bit more, things the international community could do to be a little bit tougher on governments that practice corruption, that governments that may be exposed to constraints on their behavior as a result of their corruption. And I think some of the individual programs, whether it's small local businesses saying that they're gonna absorb some of these workers, these are also constructive. There is no way we come out of a scenario like this with the ultimate list. There is no way we come out of it with revelations that haven't ever been expressed before. But by trying, as I think we've done quite successfully, to create the realistic dynamic here, we get a sense of where we might be able to make a little bit of progress, what might be a little bit more productive, what might be possible, what might not be possible. And we get a little bit of a sense of how different parties will take advantage of changes in the dynamic. And that's the purpose. There is no last word on this. The idea of peace game is ongoing series of conversations. The next component of the conversation is gonna begin in about 30 minutes. When we're gonna get together, we're gonna talk about political scenarios because there is an election coming up. There's an election in February in fact. And that's extremely important to the issues that we've talked about today in terms of governance, the functioning of this government, how that might interplay with Boko Haram in the North, how that might interplay with the security issues. And if we take the economic of the morning and we take the political of the afternoon, we'll have some better insights. That's all that we can hope for. Some better insights that'll help lead us in the direction of some better outcomes. But, as my mother would always tell me, the secret to good thinking is eating enough. And so, yes, applause for my mother. And so, what I'd like to suggest that we do is take 30 minutes, you'll hear those little chimes at the end, we'll come back in, we'll have a discussion framing the political discussion. But because we're in the US Institute of Peace, I do wanna leave the last word of the morning session to George. No, I think you've summed it up. My earlier remark was intended in part to be a challenge because what I wasn't hearing was precisely what we were able to get to in this final part, which is some specific ideas about things that could be done. And I believe, going back to Johnny's remark, that one of the things that these exercises do is that challenge us to get outside of our normal assumptions about the kinds of things we can and can't do. And particularly to focus us on what we can do as opposed to what we can't do. And I think that final part of this did, in fact, get us to where I hope we will continue to be as we move forward into the afternoon. So, thank you. Thank you. And so, go, eat. Go eat. Go eat. Ha ha ha. Thing is, the less of what can be done has to come from within Nigeria.