How Northern leaders 'swindle' the region
By Abdullahi Mohammed the gaurdain 25-04-09

Governor Aliyu Babangida of Niger State has been doing everything within his power to get fellow 18 state governors in the North and other leaders from the area to change the scandalous poverty levels in our part of the country. It is the right thing to do. Otherwise, the Millennium Development Goals will be a mirage, and the seven-point agenda of President Umaru Yar'Adua. True, poverty is pervasive in the entire country. According to international development agencies, 90million out of of Nigeria's 140 million people live in abject poverty. But desperate poverty is far more pronounced in the North.

Apparently in response to unflattering statistics, from international agencies and the Central bank of Nigeria, Gov Aliyu took the gauntlet to address the acute poverty in the area. He has, among others, conducted a major conference on this issue and sought far-reaching solutions to it within the shortest possible time. However, not all northern leaders are prepared to take the bulls by the horns. This is a colossal tragedy. Most of the culprits are men of the "ancien regime". Let us take two recent examples. In a recent interview with Thisday on Sunday, the deposed Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Ibrahim Dasuki, after spiritedly denying abject poverty in the north, contradicted himself by admitting widespread wretchedness in the region, but curiously ascribed it to the CBN Governor. The evidence of the CBN Governor's contribution to the pervasive wretchedness? The 2004 directive that the minimum capital base of every bank be increased from 2billion naira to at least 25billion naira. The erstwhile Sultan, who lives in Kaduna following his dethronement and banishment in 1994, argued that as a result of the policy there is no bank in the country, which can still be called "northern".

The second example is the recent interview in Daily Trust by an erstwhile lecturer in sociology at Ahmadu Bello University, Dr Ibrahim Tahir, who toed the Dasuki line, but was more elegant in use of language. Still, the interview was sheer sophistry, if hocus-pocus. The two prominent northerners set out to play the Don Quixote of the north. They thus ended up doing our people more harm than good. By arguing that a lower bar should be set for our region in development terms, they confirmed the impression in some quarters in the south that the north is a dependency, which must always be assisted to even get by. As someone who lives and works in the south, I am always distressed anytime someone thinks I am a "quota professional". The late General Joseph Garba, Nigeria's Minister of Foreign Affairs who later became the permanent representative to the United Nations, used to say that he felt insulted anytime someone remarked that if not for "quota"

or "federal character" he would not have achieved much in life. The sole reason some people had this impression of him was that he came from the north.

Truth be told, our people do not need either the CBN or international development agencies to acknowledge that we are where we are not supposed to be as far as development is concerned. On Wednesday, January 14, 2009, I was moved to tears while watching the Nigerian Television Authority prime news bulletin at 9pm when it aired a news feature on the growing menace of destitution in Kaduna State. Yet, no state government in the north has any programme to tackle this social blight, or the problems of begging, primitive diseases and mass adult illiteracy which are unfortunately becoming cultural in national perception and reality. The fault is not in our stars, but in our selves, to paraphrase William Shakespeare. For some years this decade, millions of children in the north could not be vaccinated because propaganda was mounted to the effect that the vaccination of children was a ploy by the western world to populate Muslims! The person who

championed this lie is amazingly a medical doctor in the person of Ahmed Datti, president of the Supreme Council for Sharia Affairs in Nigeria. Dr Datti, of course, knew better. The result of the propaganda was many more millions of northern children afflicted by polio, in addition to those who died otherwise preventable deaths. Ironically, while this propaganda was going on, all the educated and privileged northerners I know ensured that their children, wards and relatives were properly vaccinated.

Our people should learn to accept responsibility, instead of blaming outsiders for our unimpressive development. At a conference last year in Kaduna on the collapse of virtually every industry in the north, a development, which CNN featured recently, some participants attributed the tragic failure to the regime of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the very person our political leaders adopted in 1999 and 2003 over and above better materials. The number one reason for the industrial collapse was rightly identified as poor public electricity supply. Much as Obasanjo's government was a nasty piece of work, it is grossly unfair to blame it for all the mess, which the Power Holding Company of Nigeria has become. PHCN, formerly called NEPA, had collapsed long before Obasanjo became a civilian president. No new power generating stations have been built in over 25 years. Nor have basic PHCN facilities been well maintained.

Yet, every NEPA or PHCN Chief Executive in the last 25 years has been a northerner. So has every power minister except the brief period the late Chief Bola Ige, Dr Olusegun Agagu and Liyel Imoke held forte. So wealthy was a former Power and Steel Minister from the north during the Ibrahim Babangida regime that he had 18 state-of-the-art cars in his compound! When the late Dr Bala Usman, a radical historian at ABU, attempted to lead some students of Ahmadu Bello University, including my humble self, to protest against this obscene primitive accumulation, some emirs and other prominent leaders intervened and reminded us that the person "is our illustrious son". And today some northerners are looking for Obasanjo or any other southerner to serve as an escape goat for electricity collapse and the consequent de-industrialisation of the north.

The same royal fathers intervened against our planned protest over the massive sports stadium which the military government of Brigadier General Sani Sami, now an emir Kebbi State, was building in Bauchi State. At a series of lectures in 1984/85, the late Dr Usman pointed out that while Brigadier Sami (he was to retire as a Major General) was building this monstrous stadium in the educationally backward state of Bauchi, his counterpart in Imo State, Brigadier General Ike Nwachukwu, was building a state university. The university was to become at a point the best state university in Nigeria, thus deepening the stature of old Imo State as educationally advanced. Now, come to think of it: what is the regenerative or economic value of the gigantic Bauchi State Stadium?

Northern political rulers spend fortunes on non-regenerative ventures. For instance, as the 2003 general elections approached, the then governor of Kebbi State, Alhaji Adamu Aliero who is now the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, imported from the United States and distributed a number of long-stretch limousines to emirs in the state. To state the obvious, spare parts of these very costly vehicles are not available in Nigeria, just like the expertise and the machines required to diagnose their occasional problems are very difficult to come by. In other words, the money was anything but wisely spent. Think of the number of people who would have benefited if the money had been spent on education, for example. It reminds one of the interview, which ex Vice Atiku Abubakar granted the BBC on the eve of the 2003 presidential primary of the Peoples Democratic Party where he disclosed that two northern governors had given him a colossal N90m just to contest. Think of the number of cottage hospitals or boreholes this amount could have built six years ago. What do we say about the week-long opulent parties Governor Isa Yuguda of Bauchi State held in different parts of the country to mark his wedding to President Yar'Adua's daughter as his fourth wife?

The present northern political class is just swindling the people. The region must chart a new direction. Our people should listen to the likes of Gov Aliyu who can engage in honest self-examination.


Mohammed, an economist, works in a management consulting firm in Lagos.


Correspondence to 18, Abiola Subair Street, Off Medical road, Ikeja, Lagos

North is backward, says Zamfara State Governor, Mamuda Shinkafi
By Baba Negedu Trainee Reporter, Kaduna daily independent

Zamfara State Governor, Mamuda Shinkafi, has said it was because of the backward nature of the North that northern leaders should be more alive to their responsibility, as that is the only way the region could move out of its present predicament.

He advised northern leaders to strive to live up to expectation in the area of education and halting begging.

According to him, "This will go a long way not only in making the people more aware of what is happening around them, but also to contribute meaningfully to the development of the area."

Speaking at the 10th anniversary and first annual lecture and merit award ceremony of the New Impression Magazine in Kaduna, the governor, who was represented by Commissioner for Information, Mallam Ibrahim Danmaliki, pointed out that Zamfara had realised the precarious situation of the North and was working to salvage the situation.

Shinkafi, who was also honoured with an excellent performance award, stated that the catalogue of awards had shown that the government of Zamfara State was performing.

In a lecture entitled "Afro-American President of the United States (Barrak Obama): Implications and lessons for Nigeria's Democracy, Dr. Alex Kure of the Department of English Language, Kaduna State University, noted that it was only through true democracy that Nigeria could have a good and honest leadership.

According to the lecturer, Nigerians must strive to change the status quo and learn to be patient, follow due process and do things accordingly.

"We can only get to the promise land if we do things the way they are supposed to be done and do away with policies like rotational presidency and quarter system as these negate a tenant of democracy."

In his address, the Publisher and Editor in Chief of New Impression Magazine, Mr. Mordecai Sunday Ibrahim, explained that lack of advert patronage has remain the bane of magazine and newspaper in Nigeria, stressing that despite all the challenges, New Impression has lived up to expectation and cater for the interest of his readers.

Mordecai, who lambasted the northern leaders for their lack of interest in establishing media houses, explain that media in the North is passing through difficult times due to the lackadaisical attitude of both past and present leaders of the region, laying the blame of the under reporting of the region at the doorstep of the leaders.

now everybody start piling your rocks now for stoning those vampires, zombies etc in gariki market kano by 4.30 pm sharp

jinx hope u will be there

ekt_bear:

This is from a few years ago, but still relevant.

Aliyu always says the right things. But what concretely has he done in Niger State to reduce poverty, attract investment, etc?

Agric and solid materials alone will not save the north. Or any place in the world for that matter.

Better use of public funds, as well as electricity are at least two things necessary for salvation.

Only radical development in agriculture and solid minerals can save the north.