SAVING THE SOUL OF NORTHERN NIGERIA




One of the simplest definitions of Northern Nigeria according to expert is poverty, insecurity, illiteracy and loss of political power. Whether this definition serves our present purpose or not, the crisis in Northern Nigeria has reached a boiling point. From poverty, unemployment, almajirci, begging and total loss of focus to now the mother of all – the Boko Haram. As it appears both the Federal Government and the Northern political leaders are clueless on how to tackle the issue. On its part, the Federal Government has turned the region into militarized zone with the region having the highest number of military officers in most of its major cities. Also towns and villages, government and private institutions, including Universities have been barricaded, restricting movements and strict stop and search. On the other hand the Northern elites – former leaders from the region, security personnel academics are also forming groups and making contact on how to tackle the issue.

However, it appears state of emergency, military check-points and the barricades succeeded in only destroying the already impoverished people of the region, instead of solving the problem. Even the meetings, organised recently by leaders from the region did little to give hope to the people and to end the specter of violence that ravaged this part of the country. Which suggest that the approaches are just window dressing and a short-cut to tackling the main problem. Looking at Northern Nigeria today, one feels sadden and angry knowing fully that what the people of the region needed was a little push from the government and all the issues of poverty, unemployment, ethnic and religious crisis would have been history.

Although statistics and figures cannot fully explain or be used in analyzing social phenomena, the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics poverty figure does show the extent of the region’s problems although it not really represent the actual fact about Northern Nigeria. It is not just enough to state that the North is poor and then keep quite on the possible explanations of why the region is so poor. In their reaction to the expose, Northern State Governors demanded for more revenue from the federation account. What a lazy way of addressing the problem? Northern Governors are responsible for the present situation in Northern Nigeria. With the region having more than N20tr as revenue from the federation account in the last 12 years, there is little to show for all these huge sum of money, except the alleged stealing which most of these Governors are accused of.

And it appears there is no end to our problem, because all what our political elite are doing is to focus their energy and resources to getting power at the centre instead of looking inwards to what is really wrong with the region. Can we for once forget about ruling Nigeria or who becomes the next President and focus on how we can challenge our State Governors to revive agricultural sector through deliberate policies aim at helping small farmers. As we are now even the mighty Kaduna finds it very difficult to pay its staff salaries. All their revenue is diverted to security. The story is the same in all the states. With what the North has in terms of land and human resources, it is a shame that States cannot pay salary till the receive stipends from the federal purse.

Secondly, we need to challenge them on good governance, accountability and transparency. Most of our state governors have deleted these words from their dictionary. They steal the state treasury and the local government share of the revenue. Most of them don’t even have a single programme or plan or an indicator as to what they want to achieve even in six months, talkless of long term development plan for their states.

If the North has over N10m children roaming the streets begging, with only 2% of the region’s secondary school students qualifying to enter university, we know that the future of the region is a bleak one. And it is very clear for everyone to see now, even if you are travelling on air, as you leave the airport, what welcomes you to any city in Northern Nigeria – Kano, Kaduna or Sokoto is a group of dirty looking children clutching their begging bowls or old men and women knocking at your car door begging for alms. Do we have a future with this attitude? And someone as a Governor of a state can go to sleep comfortably?


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