What the North must learn from the South

Let’s begin with an anecdotal story, or rather, two stories. In November 2024, Hamdiyya Sidi Shariff, then a 19-year-old lady from Sokoto State decried the state government’s handling of banditry. But despite her life-threatening travails at the hands of the Sokoto State government over many months, she received little support from the northern public. In […]

Let’s begin with an anecdotal story, or rather, two stories. In November 2024, Hamdiyya Sidi Shariff, then a 19-year-old lady from Sokoto State decried the state government’s handling of banditry. But despite her life-threatening travails at the hands of the Sokoto State government over many months, she received little support from the northern public. In contrast, when another young lady, Ushie Rita Uguamaye, a youth corps member serving in Lagos, took to social media to criticise President Bola Tinubu over the cost-of-living crisis in the country, many Nigerians down South rose to her defence, which made attempts to persecute her difficult.

Hamdiyya’s and Rita’s circumstances were different, but both cases highlighted an increasing divide between the North and South in our attitudes to civic participation and the culture of collective demand for accountability and better governance. It is not that the South is a shining example of democratic governance itself as such, no. But at least on issues of collective security or some fundamental rights, southern publics, media and civil society tend to be more willing to draw a line and demand better, regardless of who is president or governor.

The North must learn from this, because, right now, the general tendency is not to transform individual suffering into collective demands for accountability, but to endure in silence. This diverging trend in civic culture was illustrated, again, by the recent kidnapping incidents in Oyo and Borno states on the same day. While one incident triggered protests and strikes, people largely resigned themselves to fate and prayers in the other. All Nigerian lives are equal, but one part of the country appears more willing to turn personal insecurity into collective pressure for better governance, while the other largely absorbs repeated incidents into normality. Yet, absorbing crime and cruelty into normality is precisely how evil thrives in a society.

It is true that southern media, civil society and public have tended to be generally indifferent to the insecurity situation in the North, except where there is divisive regional or religious politics to be played. But for me, the real question is not why others are not speaking loudly enough for us, but why we are not speaking loudly enough for ourselves. When governance failures cross certain thresholds, southern Nigeria appears to demonstrate a stronger culture of demanding accountability from leaders. Think the EndSARS protests, the Hunger Protest, and of course the recent protests and strikes following kidnapping incident in Ibadan.

What does the North do in the face of similar, and even worse situations? The point is simple: no one can value your life more than yourself. But perhaps the most worrying consequence of this trend is the normalisation of dysfunction. Kidnappings, mass abductions, bandit attacks and other forms of insecurity have become so frequent in the North that they increasingly appear to be treated as unfortunate realities of life rather than unacceptable governance failures that require collective action at all levels of state and society. Communities grieve, sympathise and pray, but rarely organise sustained pressure on leaders to do better. But when leaders do not feel the collective pressure of citizens, they tend to have few incentives to do better.

More importantly, for me, this culture of silence and fatalism in the face of mounting insecurity in northern Nigeria is structural, cutting across all levels of northern society, from the leadership to the followership. First, northern governors routinely issue statements condemning insecurity, but you would struggle to see evidence of their sustained advocacy and engagement with federal security institutions, and even less of their own internal collective efforts at solving the problem or at least improving the situation. This is despite the fact that many security challenges transcend state boundaries and therefore require collective political action.

Similarly, northern federal legislators rarely act in concert to keep these issues consistently on the national agenda. When last does anyone hear or see the heads of Nigeria’s security agencies being seriously grilled in either chamber of the National Assembly about the insecurity situation in the North and the rest of the country? When last did anyone hear National Assembly members demanding accountability for the trillions pumped into security budgets annually?

Northern civil society, as well as traditional and religious leaderships also appear less assertive than they once were in asserting public concerns. Organisations like the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), and other civic bodies often respond episodically rather than sustained long-term campaigns around governance failures. Labour and professional unions have similarly been less visible in demanding accountability around security challenges directly affecting their constituencies and often even members. For example, until the incident in Ibadan, many Nigerians may have forgotten that the NUT still exists. Yet, it has state chapters across all 19 states of the North where one or other form of school kidnappings have occurred in virtually every state in the past five years or so.

Northern media organisations, with the notable exception of the Daily Trust and Trust TV, also sometimes treat these incidents as isolated tragedies rather than symptoms of deeper governance failures requiring sustained scrutiny. It is often said that the North suffers some disadvantage within Nigeria’s national media landscape. But this is only partly true. The South doubtless has more established national media outlets than the North, but the North has a far richer local and local language media culture than the South. But if these media spend more effort in cannibalising content from other media, as they often do, they would have little space or incentive to produce original material that reflects the governance situations in their own local environments on a sustained basis.

Traditional and religious leaders, meanwhile, frequently encourage patience and prayer. These have their place, but they cannot replace policy or governance performance. Thus, given these structural dimensions of a weak civic culture, ordinary citizens tend to suffer their pain in silence and the leaders have little incentives to do better. Yet governance improves only when citizens consistently remind leaders that poor performance carries political and social consequences.

The sad irony is that northern Nigeria was not always like this. The North used to have a strong civic culture that spoke out against poor governance, that demanded accountability and improved governance, and that stood up for the region’s interests within Nigeria’s fractious national politics. During the struggle against colonial rule and throughout the First Republic, northern politics featured vigorous contestation. Political parties such as the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) and the Middle Belt People’s Congress (UMPC) challenged both colonial Native Authorities and the dominance of the ruling Northern People’s Congress (NPC). Opposition politics was robust, and dissent was viewed as a legitimate component of public life. Indeed, even NPC politicians consistently educated the public against political complacency.

This tradition was carried forth into the Second Republic by parties like the People’s Redemption Party (PRP) and the Great Nigeria People’s Party (GNPP) who actively challenged incumbent federal and state governments and offered alternative visions of governance. Northern politics and political leaders accommodated disagreement and recognised that those in authority should be subjected to scrutiny, even though it was inconvenient. Individual activists, student movements, labour organisations and academic unions consistently pushed governments to perform better and defend public interests, often at great personal costs.

Even more recently under the Obasanjo administration (1999-2007), northern political and civil society leaders actively challenged federal overreach when they believed regional interests were at stake. Speaker Ghali Na’Abba and others in the National Assembly frequently confronted the presidency in defence of legislative independence. Governors such as Abdulkadir Kure asserted state rights. Senior figures in Obasanjo’s own cabinet like Adamu Ciroma spoke openly when they considered it necessary. The ACF emerged partly to articulate northern concerns, while traditional rulers such as Emir Mustapha Jokolo were willing to publicly express dissenting views. Their actions mirrored the assertiveness with which then Lagos Governor Bola Tinubu defended the interests of the South-West during the same period.

The lesson from recent events, therefore, is not that some Nigerians care more than others. Rather, it is that some parts of the country have become more willing to embrace silence and fatalism in the face of unacceptable governance failure. This is what must stop. For enduring change, the North must rediscover its activist voice.