This is at the root of the region’s underdevelopment

Rulers of the Northern states received a damning report card by the president of Civil Rights Congress (CRC), Mallam Shehu Sani, in his response to a Daily Trust story that all the 19 northern states and their local governments have altogether received a whopping sum of N8.3 trillion between 1999 and 2010. His revelation is as startling as it is mind-boggling.

Yet, the North is the most vociferous about resource allocation; always fighting for more federal allocation from the national cake baked in far away Niger Delta. The question then arises: what do these northern leaders do with the resources allocated to their states? Here again, Mallam Sani provided the answer dispassionately: “the resources allocated to the states (of the north) are not commensurate with the level of development on the ground. The scandalous looting of the states (of the north) is a product of thieving and venal governors and compliant and placid state assemblies”.

As a way of stating what would have been if the locusts in human clothing had judiciously utilised their resource allocations for the development of the north, he remarked, “we (northerners) could have been on our way to the states of Malaysia or Indonesia. But we are now a region in the league of Western Pakistan and Eastern Congo”. In his judgement, even as a full-blooded northerner, “when you have thieves at the helm of affairs of a state, governance becomes a criminal enterprise and public office becomes a crime scene”.

Mallam Sani has come out boldly to reveal what many Nigerians already know about the profligacy of most northern governors and the extreme selfishness of its elite in government. Only the few wealthy people send their children to school while the majority of the youth roam the streets as beggars. It is with this regularly shared and stolen money that the privileged few acquire choice property all over the world.

Indeed, it is now becoming clearer why a northerner said many years ago that if there would be a revolution in Nigeria, it would come from the north because of the northern governments’ neglect of their citizens, especially the youth who, in league with other poor adults, constitute a significant percentage of the population. There has been a rehearsal of that prediction by what Boko Haram has been doing for more than a year now, with governors, top political functionaries and other northern elites being unable to sleep with their two eyes closed.

In the light of Mallam Sani’s revelation, we may ask why the northern governors are always asking for more money, and northern politicians going to war about juicy appointments at the federal level? They often accuse the Niger Delta of cheating them by collecting more allocation from the resource baked at the latter’s backyard, forgetting that all Nigerians live on the oil revenue accruing from the same Niger Delta.

Why can’t the northern governors, for once, stop frivolous spending, sharing of government money to traditional rulers, elites and political jobbers, unproductive annual hajj, among others? Why is it impossible for them to deploy their financial resource to the provision of good and sound education to their people? Why is the gap between the extremely rich and extremely poor in the north growing astronomically on a daily basis?

Perhaps the pitiable state of the north should serve as a lesson to other states of the federation that may be doing well (or appear to be doing well) but may face a similar fate if they are not thinking of how to judiciously use their federal allocations for the common good. They should try to stand on their own rather than keep on expecting manna, in form of handouts from Abuja, through the Niger Delta.


http://thenationonlineng.net/new/editorial/norths-misapplied-n8-3-trn/

I knew this especialy the way they indicriminatly created state and local government for themself is for federal allocation to be skewed in their favour, yet they still complain. I know a governor in bauchi that owns a very big shopping mall in dubai, houses in usa, britain, ikoyi and abuja yet his state has alot of almanjeries and unemployed youth. Gov Alimadu sheriff use to order for trucks full of customised okada with customise name sas from china instead of providing infrastructures, industries, agricultural incentives etc kano state gov will be sharing money to traditional and religious leader, hajj, mass wedding, fasting etc now the present governor is diverting the looted leftover to build a new modern city that the poor will not have the capacity to live in, yet could not stimulate the industrial growth, agricultural growth, provide employments, improve infrastructure. I was watching AIT some days back it was rochas who came from imo to come and establish standard school for the poor in Niger state yet ibrahim babangida the aclaim richest african former president, abdulsalam and mr we want more, governor aliyu babangida are from the state living shamelesly.
With all this atrocities going on, all what northern political, religious and traditional rulers will do is to want to take away Nigerdelta resources.

Shocking! That means each northern state has received about 400+ billion between 1999 and 2010.

Yet they claim that poverty is the root cause of terrorism in the region. How else can the region be funded? I think power, not money or poverty is what they need. They alway crave to be in power. God help us o.

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and afterwards they go to the mosque to

nduchuks odikwa very serious out there