The recent nationwide protests against poor governance were caused by the federal government’s inability to relate with citizens. While some presidential spokespersons fostered a sense of hopelessness and frustration by encouraging tribalism against south-easterners, others spoke in uncompassionate, insincere and disrespectful tones, which fostered nationwide protests. While in the South West and South South unarmed protestors were vocal but mainly peaceful, in the North it was a different matter altogether as protestors armed themselves, destroyed property, and called for military governance.
Their well-documented destruction and looting had nothing to do with the stated objectives of the protest organisers who were not trying to change government but trying to reverse the simultaneous removal petroleum subsidy, floating of the naira and increased electricity prices which caused heightened nationwide suffering.
It only requires an elementary understanding of developmental economics to have predicted that such simultaneous actions would cause severe inflation and social unrest. Especially, since quite appallingly the skyrocketing petrol and electricity prices are coming at a time when neither fuel nor electricity is easily available! Even worse, while our nation is to all intents and purposes bankrupt, political office holders show no inclination to be prudent and cease squandering public money on personal comforts and self-aggrandisement.
While Northerners have every right to be agitated about their predicament, they must appreciate that neither President Tinubu nor the federal government are solely to blame. The main architects of their problems are Northern leaders who ruled the nation for over five decades but failed to properly address the region’s education deficit. They built universities which are mainly populated by southerners, and did nothing to encourage northern youths to go to primary and secondary school or apprentice and learn marketable employment skills. The end result is that the majority of northern youths remain uninformed, unskilled and unemployable, and therefore forced to resort to menial labour, criminality or begging.
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Quite lamentably despite producing the majority of Nigeria’s military and civilian Heads of State Northern Nigeria remains neglected in terms of physical and capital development. It has one of the lowest human capital development indexes in Africa, the nation’s worst healthcare record exemplified by the never ending spread of preventable deceases, and also has the highest number of children out of school.
A major problem is the continued operation of the almajiri system which foregoes functional western education, and prevents numerous talented Northern youths from creating wealth by excelling in academia, sports, music, or the arts. Even as the majority of Northern youths are uneducated, the children of the northern elite attend the best schools and universities overseas to ensure that they retain positions of dominance from which they subjugate the uneducated masses and engage in endless misappropriation and treasury looting.
The absence of progressive governance in the North leads many Southerners to believe that Islam is synonymous with a lack of modernity. This of course is not true. The backwardness in Northern Nigeria is not due to religion, rather it’s due to mass illiteracy and unenlightened governance.
In Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam, they have re-interpreted and re-applied the principles and ideals of Islam to enable their citizens to adopt and enjoy the scientific and societal developments of modernity. Saudi Arabian Muslim children combine their Arabic education with western academic or technical education in order to ensure a dedicated moral, ethical and well-educated leadership which has enabled them to banish backwardness and operate a modern airline, enjoy modern infrastructure, run a space programme, possess world class hospitals and universities, and live in a peaceful and secure nation.
There is ample evidence to prove that instead of dedicated moral leaders who actually develop the region, the North has been afflicted with leaders enamoured with pomposity and luxurious lifestyles at public expense. The region’s dire situation will never improve until its leaders draw their core values from the condition of the people they set out to serve. Misplaced priorities amongst Northern governors can be exemplified by Zamfara State budgeting N19.3 billion for kitchen equipment, and only N14.5 billion for provision of water, and schools! Bauchi State budgeted N2.9 billion to purchase office furniture, while only N2.3 billion was earmarked for agricultural facilities and their Ministry of Power, Science and Technology! Adamawa State budgeted N2.3 billion for building a Deputy Governor’s lodge in Abuja and renovating his office in Yola, while only N2.15 billion was budgeted for primary health care and provision of water facilities!
The truth is that the first step in solving the problems of the North is to restrain Northern political office holders from habitually engaging in ill-considered squander-mania.
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