The pathetic case of Northern Nigeria

They keep piling it on – the bad news, that is. Early last week, we learnt that Nigeria placed 6th on the global misery index featuring 95 countries. And the week closed with the disclosure by Aliko Dangote, the multi-billionaire chairman of the Dangote Group, that 60 per cent of the people in the North-West and the North-East geo-political zones live in extreme poverty.

In his keynote address at the Kaduna Investment Summit, Nigeria’s most successful business man said: “In the north western and north eastern parts of Nigeria, more than 60 per cent of the population live in extreme poverty. It is instructive to know,” he went on, “that the 19 northern states which account for over 54 per cent of the country’s population and 70 per cent of its landmass collectively generated only 21 per cent of the total sub national internally generated revenue in 2017.”

There you have it from the son of the soil. Dangote is not a politician. He is a businessman who is concerned about what is happening to and in the northern states under the watch of fellow northerners in the executive branches of government. I like listening to him because he likes to tell it as it is. He has on several occasional challenged our political leaders on the management of our human and natural resources to turn things around for the region. His exhortation fell on ears that have not been waxed for some time. It must be as painful to him as it is to the rest of us, that things are getting worse, much worse for our country in general and northern Nigeria in particular. This giant of Africa has been reduced to a pigmy on all accounts.

Dangote rightly observed at the summit that “Nigeria is bedevilled with many developmental challenges but with abundant capital, human and natural resources. Our country’s human developmental indicators rank poorly when compared with the global averages. Nigeria is ranked 157 out of 189 countries in the areas of human development index.”

Nigeria is a nation of cruel ironies. I suppose it is a mystery that a country so richly endowed with human and natural resources finds itself flailing, trying to find its feet in its developmental challenges. Crude oil, the mainstay of our national economy, is more of a curse than a blessing today. We have not been able to use our oil wealth to carve out an economic niche for our country. It is painful that Nigeria is officially classified as the poverty capital of the world. We need to consult a group of babalawo to unravel the anomalous mystery of the rich but poor nation. What is happening to us and our country cannot be normal.

Nigeria has 80 per cent arable land, yet it imports rice from South Korea, a tiny country with only 13 per cent arable land. It is not the natural order of things that a smaller country should feed a bigger country. And so, not surprisingly, the week closed with the bad news from the United Nations that Nigeria is one of seven hungriest nations in the world. Our people are hungry because they are poor. Our high score on the misery index released by Professor Hanke early last week was but a logical step in the direction we have chosen for our country.

The case of Northern Nigeria is particularly pathetic. The once peaceful region knows peace no more. It has been turned into a killing field. No one is safe any where in the region today – not in their homes, not on intercity roads and not on the streets of our own towns and cities. It is ravaged by all manners of security challenges – Boko Haram in the north-east, bandits in the north-west and a roaming band of kidnappers that have made inter-city travels dangerous. It has been this bad for the region. And, given the do nothing attitude of our leaders, it could only get worse.

Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy of the region. The farms have become the first casualty of the comprehensive insecurity bedevilling the region. The region has lost the comparative advantage it had as the food basket of the nation. Farms are abandoned because farmers fear risking their lives going to work on their small peasant holdings. It requires no rocket science to see that without a sustainable means of livelihood, the peasant farmers in the region can only get extremely poorer, not in the future but right now.

Poverty has multiplier effects. If the farmers earn nothing, they cannot afford to put their children through school. At the moment we have 13 million children out of school nation-wide but the north has a disproportionate share of some 70 per cent of this figure. A casual glance tells you in no uncertain terms that the educational gap between the north and the south is not really a gap any more; it is now a gulf.

All human societies face developmental and other critical challenges. The responsibility for charting a development course lies squarely on the shoulders of their political leaders. It seems to me that our northern governors generally enjoy the perks of power at the expense of discharging their responsibilities. Perhaps we need to remind them of the quip by Churchill that power without responsibility is the province of the harlot.

It seems utterly wasted to tell our governors to wake up and serve the interests of their states and in the process, give us back our Northern Nigeria. Let them sleep on in the protected comfort of their government houses, blissfully unaware that their states are bleeding badly from their failure to take their responsibilities for security seriously. It hurts.