The problems of the north can only be solved by northerners themselves. Unfortunately, salvation may still be very far from the region because of the hypocrisy of its elite. How can a region with fast potential be pleased to always play the victim?
They are usually quick to scream about the backwardness of the region but are never intent on improving the status quo.
For the elite from that region the victim card is their meal ticket. It’s the gateway to political benefits and appointments.
Once the appointment or political patronage comes, they forget about the welfare of the multitude of the poor and underprivileged.
The mere thought of losing power for a day drives them into a frenzy, yet for all of the years they have held on to power, the region has continued to remain backward in all indices of human development and growth.
In the economy of the nation, the northern elite and their scions are everywhere. From the financial institutions to the ministries, from government parastatals and agencies to the security services; in all these key sectors of the economy and government Hausa is the official language; they are manning everywhere and yet they unabashedly still enjoy screaming the backwardness of the region as bargaining chip for political patronage. The question is what have they done with the opportunities they have had?
If all the elite require to develop that region is to retain power, then they should ask the other regions, especially the southeast, how they have managed with little or no government patronage or presence.
Last week, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the National Security Adviser, while speaking at Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto said mass illiteracy was responsible for making youths in the north susceptible to being easily recruited to propagate insecurity in the region.
The NSA lamented that the North was facing a myriad of challenges, ranging from insecurity and out-of-school children, among others.
Ribadu, who stated this while delivering the convocation lecture of the institution themed: “Navigating the Maze: Addressing Multi-Dimensional Insecurity Challenges in Northern Nigeria,” also said the poverty index in the region was alarming.
He noted that educational disparities between the region and other parts of Nigeria played a significant role in the dynamics of radicalisation witnessed in the region.
He explained that the educational gap in the region not only restricted economic opportunities but fueled grievances and heightened susceptibility to extremist ideologies.
In his words, “Groups such as Boko Haram and other extremists exploit these vulnerabilities by offering alternative narratives that promise belonging, purpose, and at times financial benefits for coercion.”
The former Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) boss said it was to help the North address some of these challenges that President Bola Tinubu decided to hand over strategic key leadership positions of the areas to northerners.
He said Tinubu appointed northerners to head security and Defence. “He gave us both ministers of Agriculture and Education. The Minister of health is from the North. It is for us to make the best of it.
“He gave us a chance. Now the rest is on us, we northerners. Let’s put our differences aside and work for the betterment of our region and Nigeria,” he said.
Perhaps to underscore our bothered the NSA is about the plight of his people, he had about a month earlier, held a close-door meeting with the 19 governors of the Northern States and Service Chiefs, in the Office of the NSA (ONSA), to review security situation in Northern Nigeria and possibly proffer lasting solution.
The problem of the region remains that of the leaders and elite. There has never been a genuine intention to lift the people from their pitiable condition of life.
Ribadu, may be genuinely worried but the situation should go beyond mere lamentation. They should go the route of a deliberate effort to improve the lot of their people. A situation where a single politician can be richer than the entire state after serving four or eight years as governor is certainly not the way to go.
Today, the standout exception to what seems as a rule in the region is the exceptional and brilliant effort of the governor of Borno State, Babagana Zulum. His leadership style is free of sycophancy and hypocrisy.
He is simply walking the talk and showing not just the north but the whole of the nation, what leadership should be. Everything Zulum does is done with a touch of brilliance and quality. His intervention in education is not just commendable but worthy of emulation. His supervision and distribution of projects and even palliatives are unique and deliberate.
To think that Zulum is doing all of this with Boko Haram breathing down the neck of the state, makes his leadership commendable. The insurgency in Borno would have been more than enough reasons for Zulum’s less ingenious and sycophantic colleagues from the region to sit back and lament while at the end they would end up stupendously enriching themselves.
The north has benefited more from Project Nigeria than any other region and therefore do not have any premise to keep lamenting being disadvantaged. The only attributable reason to all of this is that the current structure of the nation has made several governors lazy and laid back. They simply wait for monthly allocation to be shared. Ditto for the local governments. They appear monthly to share whatever is left of their allocation after the state governors would have finished tampering with it.
And as the accruing resources from the centre keep getting leaner, the fortunes of the ordinary folks keep getting worse. A federal structure that is not working, yet we do not have the nerve to review it and restructure it to work.
And like the NSA has said, education which is the key driver to addressing most of the problem of the north has remained largely in the hands of the northern elite as ministers and yet education is still their greatest challenge. What does it take to educate a population? What did it cost leaders of the other regions to lift their masses from illiteracy? Why has this problem remained like rocket science to the leaders of the north?
Former President Goodluck Jonathan spent over N15 billion on the Almajiri Schools programme in the north while he was in office to infuse western education curriculum into Islamic education to make the pupils employable and to check incessant crisis and insecurity.
But what did the leaders of the region do? They simply allowed it to rot away claiming that it was not well envisioned, yet they do not have a better alternative.
Alhaji Lateef Jakande and Chief Obafemi Awolowo, both of blessed memories, in their bid to mass educate their people built what many derisively dismissed as not being fit for animals, yet but for that policy many people, including yours sincerely, would probably not have gone to school.
For how long will the entire country continue to bend backwards to please the elite from the north?
For instance, one of the most memorable ‘achievements’ I recall of Abba Yusuf, governor of Kano after assuming office was a mass wedding ceremony conducted for 1,800 couples. The wedding was sponsored and officiated by the Kano state government and N50,000 in dowry was paid on behalf of each groom to their brides. The wedded couples received beds, bedding, food, and clothes from the state government.
What is the objective here is to breed children and create more problems or is that an empowerment programme?
This mentality reflects the thinking pattern of the northern elite; to leave their people in abject poverty and misery and use them as cannon fodder for political expediency. That thinking must change for any meaningful progress to be made. It is beyond rhetoric and seminar and symposia, it is deliberate and conscious effort to collectively lift the populace from their misery and mass illiteracy, a la Babagana Zulum in Borno.
