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An excerpt In response to Sanusi Lamido: Poverty in the North and Boko Haram: Borno State has a budget twice that of Enugu State but the poverty and unemployment level in Borno State is more than thrice that of Enugu State. Borno has a bigger budget than a Niger Delta state – Cross River. While the leaders of Cross River over the last decade have transformed it into the nation’s leading tourist destination; those of Borno have transformed it into a Somalia.

Kano State gets the highest statutory allocation from the Federal Government, because on paper Kano is the most populated state in Nigeria, yet Kano has about 1.6 million destitute Almajiris. Kano has a budget almost thrice the budget of Enugu, twice the budget of Kwara, Anambra and Ekiti, but how come almost 90 per cent of students in Kano fail WAEC? How come the poverty level in Kano is higher than all these states put together? Why is the North so poor? From the figures above I have shown that Southern states with lesser budgets have shown better development performance than most North Eastern states with bigger statutory allocation and budgets.

I want to posit that the North-East through their aristocrats and ex-military rulers (except Gen. Mohammed Buhari) rake in more oil money (from the Niger Delta) individually than any Niger Delta state, and collectively more than twice the entire Niger Delta put together. In this disquisition, I have attempted to show that 80 per cent of crude oil and gas produced by indigenous companies is controlled by the North-East. It is an area they have well conquered through Generals IBB, Abacha and Abdulsalami. However, the loots never get back home.

Let us therefore begin: To the state of origin of Boko Haram: Borno State. Enter Cavendish Petroleum, the operators of OML 110 – with good yielding OBE field. This oil block was awarded to Alhaji Mai Deribe – the Borno patriarch, who even in death will remain the richest man dead or alive in the history of Borno State – by General Sani Abacha on July 8, 1996. OML 110 has a proven oil reserve in excess of 500 million barrels (more than the entire 300million barrels reserve of Sudan). As yet with the capacity to produce about 120,000 barrels of crude oil daily from its OBE 4 and OBE 5 wells. At optimal production levels, Cavendish nets circa N4billion monthly in crude oil sales (using current oil price of $100pb). Cavendish Petroleum’s N4bn monthly net dwarfs the monthly statutory allocation of Borno which is about N3bn and its internally generated revenue staggers around N1billion.

His mansion in Maiduguri has become a tourist attraction. A simple Google search will throw up different perspectives of Mai Deribe’s palatial home.

Enter Oriental Energy Resources Limited, a company owned by Alhaji Mohammed Indimi, a Fulani and close friend of General Ibrahim Babangida. Also worthy of note is that General IBB’s first son is married to Alhaji Mohammed Indimi’s daughter – Yakolo Indimi-Babangida, who also serves as a director in the company. Alhaji Indimi hails from Borno State.