2019 Aurora Humanitarian Zannah Bukar Mustapha is Director and Founder of Future Prowess Islamic Foundation – a school that provides education to some of the most vulnerable in Maiduguri, Nigeria. He is committed to creating a safe space for children caught in the violence and giving them the future they deserve. Here he talks about changing the society’s mindset and his hopes for peace.

Changing the Future Today

I set up the Future Prowess Islamic Foundation in 2007 to give supportive services to orphans and vulnerable children who could not access education. In 2009, the Boko Haram insurgency started. A lot of people were killed, their children and wives were left on the street: they could not access education. So, that was how I intervened to help those children and widows, at least for the widows to have a livelihood.

I took the two sides of the debate, which never see eye to eye. I enrolled them into the foundation and then started giving them sort of a livelihood skill in collaboration with international development agencies like the ICRC and the UNHCR, which are the one key component that helped giving the support to orphans and vulnerable children in my area.

Education and Unity Is Key

Boko Haram, their fight is against education. Their whole fight is against education, and that is what we primarily do. What we do the most, we now liberate on our diversity. There are children whose parents are Boko Haram, and there are children whose parents are security officers, likewise, those that are cut off in the insurgency. But we were able to liberate, to strike a balance between the two.

Like my own biological children are part of it, likewise other directors who are of the Future Prowess have their own children. So, we were able to strike a balance where nobody sees the others as they have been, because they were either being victimized, or survivors, in which case they have to work together harmoniously to see that they achieve certain goals in their life.

There’s no other thing as bad as ignorance. Education has always been one thing that brings a civilized community. If a community is educated, it is a civilized community. If the community is an ignorant community, it is also unstable. So, there is nothing that one can use to support educational efforts, to bring about peace, bring about stabilization, apart from education.

Education is the only binding force between nations, between communities of nations and individuals. Anybody embedded in any community must have some education because one cannot do without education. Education, for me, is not about literacy. But you need to have education for you to say you are working for the future, and that is the only tool we are using, and that is the only tools we use to bind the community or to bring stabilization that we readily want. Education is the only tool that one can use to normalize the future or the present. So that is why we gave education. It’s the only tool we used to get across to others, and that is why we are even having the peace that we are, now saying it is about to be achieved. So, that is the only tool that we used.

Aurora Forum as Global Inspiration

It is such a unique and inspirational forum that gives such an opportunity. It doesn’t happen at times, because this Aurora Forum is one unique forum, because it is something that happens out of a genocide committed against them, but they were able to come out of it and give such inspirational ideas. For me, coming from Africa, from northeast Nigeria, for a forum, somebody who has been cheated or somebody who has been, these people have been killed, for him to say that he’s bringing all those humanitarian crises that happened together, for them to say they share humanity, that is one amazing thing that I will say is such a thriller.

Because it doesn’t only come from Africa, it’s also from the Middle East: the ISIS, the Yazidis. These are some unique voices, because the world is going through globalization, and these are such opportunities that can bind or bring this together. We are caught up in an inseparable net of mutuality. All of us are seen as one, as a country, as a human being, as everybody who has the dignity of life, our nation. And for somebody who had a genocide committed against him, for him to say that we are bringing such a power is such a great and amazing thing to be done in life. I am sure we are going to replicate such good cases in our place in Nigeria.

Gratitude in Action

Gratitude in action is the way a community of people can come out to say: “We are working for peace, or for humanity.” For me personally, it has really touched me, because this is something I want to replicate, especially to see where there is some of this gratitude in action, like this scholarship program, we want to bring people of diverse backgrounds so they can also come and benefit out of this. We are not only limiting the Aurora project to the Armenians here. We are taking it back to Armenia, and then walk out and also show them, because similar things happened in Nigeria. We want to use this as an opportunity for us to support what the Aurora stands to and gain on this. This is what, God willing, we are going to implement.

A Peaceful Future

If there is one thing that I always see as the binding force, it is for us to understand our diversity, understand it and work together. That is the only place where we have a sort of this shared institutional framework. We always want to be an inclusive institution where nobody is left behind. Like my children are part of it, the children of the Boko Haram, who are the fighters, are also part of it, the security agencies that are depending parties are also part of it. When you leave nobody [behind] in the project, everybody feels part of the project, so it is an inclusive institution where everybody feels this.

We started this project in 2007. Now, we are in 2019. That has taken about 12 years now. We were able to get children who were born there and then started getting education with us. If you’re talking about the de-radicalization program, these children have gone through the education we gave them. They are now coming out to say: “Yes, my parents are Boko Haram. What about it?”

But we want it to work for us. How do you do that? “I saw my parents when my parents were killed. So, I am forgiving it. Why is it that you cannot do that? I lost my parents to the insurgency. I lost the two parents to the insurgency. Yet, I am saying: “We should go for peace.” What is your own stake at that?”

So, if we can get this sort of children coming across the barriers debate, believe me, these will be the children that will settle for amicable peace in the future. So, for me, we have given them the best of education, the best of morals, and those will be the tools they are going to use to get peace if we cannot do that because peace has always been a slow process.

Photo: © UNHCR/Rahima Gambo