Northern Nigeria: Big for nothing!
The period immediately following Nigeria’s independence has seen the leaders of northern Nigeria taking control of political power at the centre. These and subsequent leaders have held that power interchangeably for the most part of the country’s independent existence. Northern leaders have therefore been placed in various advantaged positions to have sufficiently encouraged fast growth […]
The period immediately following Nigeria’s independence has seen the leaders of northern Nigeria taking control of political power at the centre. These and subsequent leaders have held that power interchangeably for the most part of the country’s independent existence.
Northern leaders have therefore been placed in various advantaged positions to have sufficiently encouraged fast growth in the region. Recently after holding the office of the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, a fellow northerner is deputy secretary general of the United Nations Organisation.
Closer home, the North is in control of all strategic positions in the military, police, and other security services while holding the presidency and leadership of the National Assembly for the last five years. “Can you imagine that despite the North’s monopoly of Nigeria’s security architecture, the most insecure part of the country is still the North” said Yakubu Ahmed BK in an online article.
President, Senate President, Speaker, Secretary to the government of the federation, Defence Minister, National Security Adviser (NSA), Chief of Army Staff, Chief of Air Staff, Inspector General of Police, Director General State Security Service, Commandant General, Nigeria Civil Defence Corps, Comptroller General Immigration Service, Comptroller General Nigeria Prison Service, Director General Nigeria Intelligence Agency (NIA), Director General NDLEA and Comptroller General Nigeria Custom Service etc. are all Northerners, yet banditry, kidnapping, cattle-rustling, drug abuse, sexual abuse etc. and other high level criminal activities are spiralling out of control in their places of birth. “What right have we got to lament if non northerners occupy these seats and look the other way at our malaise” the online writer concluded.
This has given rise to the general expectation that the North should be as developed as the other regions of the country of even more developed. Perhaps it is this assumption that has earned the North the place of the biggest and perhaps most potentially influential of all.
On paper and in conversations it sounds good to refer to Northern Nigeria as the largest and most populated of all the regions in Nigeria. In practical terms, contrary is the case.
The brutal reality which every northerner knows, though very few want to talk about, is that beyond the size in landmass and population, the region has in the span of just about five decades, turned literally into the poverty capital of Nigeria, the home of the largest percentage of illiterate Africans.
The North that was the bulwark of respect, integrity, dignity, decorum, tradition, decency, morality, civilization, etiquette, good behaviour, politeness, accommodation, and all other positive traits, is today the bastion of everything that makes life difficult for a people.
Mass joblessness, homelessness and hopelessness have become the most dominant features of the region which breeds and parades battalions of Almajirai on the streets of every city and town.
The northern elites who have held and still hold influential positions under various Nigerian administrations, have ironically helped in bringing down the North by destroying its institutions, shutting its people out of positions of responsibility in government, undermining its economic and social fabrics, and encouraging rampant poverty, and social problems like prostitution, drug and substance abuse.
The North can today only boast of professionals, educated or otherwise; who fail to live by the ethics of their professions, law makers who become law-breakers. Self-serving leaders who are driven by unbridled greed enthrone the culture of parochialism, patronage and ethnic bigotry. leaders who after mismanaging the regular federal allocations, go ahead to obtain loans for the indebtedness of living and unborn generations. A combination of these extreme situations have justifiably turned the North into the most volatile and even most violent part of the country with its people vilified and involved in committing every sin under the sun, its institutions scandalized and its traditions and customs ridiculed. Conclusively therefore, unless what remains of those termed as cultured northerners rise quickly to the occasion and begin to treat this trend as an existential threat to the future and hopes of the North, the coming generations are without a doubt bound to ask questions such as “what went wrong?” Haba Arewa! Mu tashi mu farka yan Arewa! (oh my dear North let us wake up from our sleep).
Ibrahim Jirgi, a journalist and Managing Director of TRIPLE CEE MEDIA, wrote from Abuja