Agenda for Northern Governors

The 19-strong Northern State Governors Forum (NSGF) met in Kaduna on Friday, 11th September, 2015 to discuss and plot development strategies for the region. In terms of the multiplicity of economic, political and social problems in this part of Nigeria, these governors have their plate full. The forum is now being chaired by the dynamic […]

The 19-strong Northern State Governors Forum (NSGF) met in Kaduna on Friday, 11th September, 2015 to discuss and plot development strategies for the region. In terms of the multiplicity of economic, political and social problems in this part of Nigeria, these governors have their plate full. The forum is now being chaired by the dynamic and debonair Kashim Shettima, Governor of Borno State, who has demystified Ali Modu Sheriff. Ali Modu Sheriff, you would recall, had misled ex-President Goodluck Jonathan into believing that he and the Peoples Democratic Party could win Borno and Yobe states in the 2015 elections, reason why they gave him armoured vehicles and battalions of soldiers to move about.
Nevertheless, Shettima will have to lead efforts to first of all mend the fences broken by the selfish ambitions of Governors Gabriel Suswam of Benue state, Isa Yuguda of Bauchi State and Jonah Jang of Plateau State, who deliberately allowed themselves to be used by ex-President Goodluck Jonathan in his well known quest for re-election through divide and rule tactic. I had reason to observe then that despite his perfidy, the forum would outlive Yuguda. It’s noteworthy that both Suswam and Yuguda lost elections to the Senate and are today at the mercy of their successors regarding alleged administrative and financial misdeeds. Though Suswam followed Jonathan everywhere he went, including Jerusalem, the misguided young man has absolutely nothing to show for it today.
I believe that Governors Muhammed Abubakar of Bauchi, Sam Ortom of Benue and Simon Lalong of Plateau have followed those shameful developments closely as well as the despicable roles played by their predecessors in their bid to break up the unity of the NSGF. By now, they will have also realised the futility of trying to break Northern solidarity as inspired by our founders and represented by our common desires.
I repeat, the plate of the NGSF is full; begging, cattle rustling, desertification, drug addiction, illiteracy, insurgency, poverty, unemployment and other troubles have enveloped Northern Nigeria and unless the Governors make conscious efforts to tackle these issues, our civilisation is damned. The North and to some extent, the South South, represents Nigeria’s diversity. In Adamawa alone, you have dozens of ethnic and language groupings. The 19 Northern Governors must realize that our people have a common destiny whether we are from Koma or from Kano. The kidney, the lung and pancreas are all enclosed together; they certainly need one another to be fine as the illness of one is bound to disturb the well being of the other.
Thank God, the bloody ethno-religious fights in Benue, Plateau and Taraba have lessened, but deliberate efforts must be made to address their root causes and stamp them out once and for all. Similarly, the initiative by the Governors of Kaduna, Kebbi, Niger and Sokoto to police the forest areas shared by their states should be sustained so as to insulate them from being turned into terrorist bases by the disorganised and fleeing Boko Haram fighters.
The most urgent task of the 19 governors is to join hands with President Muhammadu Buhari’s government to restore peace to the North East. Boko Haram’s murderous campaign is a whole national threat and as the different and far flung internally displaced persons’s camps have shown, there cannot be peace in the country while Borno, Yobe, Gombe, Adamawa and other states burn. The Northern states should press hard for a development commission or an agency by whatever name it is called, to minister to the desperate development needs of the North East. Boko Haram menace must be urgently eliminated, displaced people returned to their homes and basic services quickly restored to all those who need them.
The achievement of peace in the North should be followed by the need to improve the economic fortunes of the masses of the people. Each state should find at least one economic activity it can concentrate on. Agriculture is common to all of them; those who can produce rice should go ahead and do so; others can cultivate ground nut to help revive the pyramids or sugar cane to produce sugar and cotton to help restart the textile factories. In this regard, the revitalisation of the Kaduna and Kano textiles is in the interest of the entire North. If the textiles had been operational during these past twenty years, by now we would have established dominance in the clothing market on the continent. Revival of the textiles should proceed apace; if commerce blossoms in Kaduna and Kano, the economic fortunes of the North will bloom. The Northern governors should cooperate with one another and make the restoration of the textiles a priority. Has anyone given a thought to how the re-establishment of over three hundred thousand jobs can impact on our blighted economy?
Obviously, a very important issue that escaped the attention of the 19 governors while they were meeting in Kaduna last week is desertification. From Borno to Kebbi, our land is daily eaten by the desert and previous efforts to deal with this problem have remained half-hearted. Now is the time for the governors to take advantage of the Green Wall initiative of the federal government and play their own role in making sure that desert encroachment is curtailed.
The Northern governors should realize that we have only two things: our land and our people; we must therefore cultivate the land and develop our human resources. It is said repeatedly that Japan has no petroleum resources or other mines but they have people and today, because of the sound minds of their citizens facilitated by qualitative education, they are in the lead in almost all spheres of life. It’s not petroleum, it’s the people; petroleum will dry up but the people will dwell on.