North East, insurgency and dad leadership

The number of people living in abject poverty in the region has increased due to the rising insecurity there. Apart from the insecurity, other factors such as poor leadership, unequal distribution of resources, lack of basic education, overpopulation, absence of employment opportunities, and environmental degradation have also helped in entrenching poverty in the Northeast. Often, […]

The number of people living in abject poverty in the region has increased due to the rising insecurity there. Apart from the insecurity, other factors such as poor leadership, unequal distribution of resources, lack of basic education, overpopulation, absence of employment opportunities, and environmental degradation have also helped in entrenching poverty in the Northeast. Often, Individuals who found themselves in leadership positions in the region (especially Adamawa, Taraba and Borno States) were never prepared for the job.
Furthermore, the political system in that region is so corrupted that the easy way to secure an elective office is to have the right godfather (money bags); belong to the political party in power whether at the centre or in state and during electioneering campaign all that is needed of one is to climb to the podium, rain abuses on the opponents, shout the name of your political party and dance. Shikenan! How do we expect such system to produce good leadership?
In the Northeast, political office has become opportunity for self-enrichment and it is associated with pride, arrogance and larger-than-life attitude, though it is a Nigerian phenomenon. On the other hand, the people of the Northeast are to be blame, in some instances, the society expect or encourage ‘their people in power’ to have or to do certain things even if they are wrong; just because one ‘Olodo’ did have or did it before.  While in other parts of Nigeria, it was reported that some people sold their votes for a bag of rice, the leaders in Northeast have impoverished their citizen; a vote will go for just a 100 naira in that region.
The people of the Northeast are the first Nigerians to witness Africa’s new social disorder- courtesy of insurgency, poverty and extremely bad leadership.
 
Zayyad I. Muhammad, Jimeta, Yola <[email protected]>;