Northern Leaders Have A Duty To Fix The North

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Whenever I hear Northern leaders lament over the parlous state of the region, I wonder what they have been thinking all these years. As the legendary novelist, Chinua Achebe, wrote in his 1964 magnum opus, Arrow of God, “the man that brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit.”

For too long, Northern elites have been busy hauling home ant-infested firewood. It is, therefore, the height of hypocrisy when they pretend to be surprised that they have lizards as guests.

Are they just realizing that they are the reason why Northern Nigeria is the worst in all the three indices of human development, which Pakistani economist, Mahbub ul Haq, developed in 1990, namely, life expectancy, education, and per capita income?

The Human Development Index (HDI), which is a statistic composite index of life expectancy, education – years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon entering the education system – and per capita income indicators, which are used to rank countries into four tiers of human development of “very high, high, medium and low” are all precarious in the North.

So, when Nigeria is ranked as one of the countries in the world that occupies the lowest rung in human development, it is because of the abysmal position of Northern Nigeria on HDI.

Sadly, these wounds are self-inflicted, caused by a self-conflicted, predatory, ultra-selfish elite class, who are only interested in power for its sake.

Why do I say so?

They have dominated the political space in Nigeria since independence in 1960, using state power to corner national resources. Of the 36 states in Nigeria, the North has 19 and the Federal Capital Territory. Southern Nigeria has 17. In fact, while the Southeast was allocated five states, North West has seven. Nigeria has 774 local government areas. Kano State alone has 44.

Nigerian leaders of Northern extraction have also used their absolute control of political power, particularly in the years of the military, to manipulate census figures, thereby ensuring that the North has maximum advantage population-wise.

And then, they started making the authoritative allocation of our collective values using local governments, landmass and rigged population as yardsticks.

If power is a means to an end where the end is the promotion of common good, one would have thought that the North would be heaven on earth. And it should be where leaders are altruistic because, ideally, acquisition of power is like the start of a journey. The difference lies in the destination, which explains why power can be a revolution and remarkable success or lamentable destruction and failure.

The Northern elites chose the latter. Having acquired power over the years, they spent a ton of time trying to maintain and increase their power, perceiving it as an end in itself. That is what happens when leaders lose sight of the reasons they wanted power. They become conceited, haughty and vague. Philosophers are agreed on the fact that absentminded use of power can be dangerous.

That is exactly what happened to the North.

Today, despite the quantum of resources they control, and I daresay disproportionately, insecurity is endemic in the North, number of out-of-school-children in the region is perhaps the highest in the whole world.

When it is said that Nigeria is the poverty capital of the world, it is because of Northern Nigeria. Nigeria is the illiteracy capital of the world because of the North. Nigerians have the fifth worst average life expectancy of about 55 years in the world because of the North.

In July, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) announced that 526 persons died from cholera even as 22,130 suspected cases of the disease were recorded in 18 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) since the beginning of the cholera outbreak in 2021. Fifteen of the 18 states – Benue, Zamfara, Gombe, Kogi, Sokoto, Bauchi, Kano, Kaduna, Plateau, Kebbi, Niger, Nasarawa, Jigawa, Yobe, Kwara as well as the FCT – are all in the North.

The NCDC report also revealed that though there was a decrease in the number of new cases in the last two weeks of July, yet Bauchi with a total case of 2, 438, Kano 674, and Plateau 87 accounted for 91 per cent of the 3,519 cases reported in weeks 27th and 28th.

Those who were not killed by cholera are liquidated by terrorists. Those lucky to be alive are living in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs).

Life in Northern Nigeria over the years, but most especially under President Muhammdu Buhari’s watch, typifies the Hobbesian “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” state.

So offended was the veteran journalist and inimitable columnist, Dan Agbese, that he called out Northern leaders in his article titled, “Shame on northern Nigerians” in The Guardian on July 9, 2021.

“The region bleeds and has been bleeding from Boko Haram, bandits, Fulani herdsmen, kidnappers and sundry criminal elements,” Agbese, himself a Northerner from Benue State, wrote.

“There is no way one can put it less indelicately: it is a shame on our governments and our political leaders who sought the mandate of the people, not to lead them into the gutter or abandon them there but to make their lives meaningful to them. But here we are: while the good times roll for our political leaders, the rough times roll for the people; while the leaders are protected by a phalanx of security men and women, the people are at the mercy of criminals who profit from the cynical attitude of our leaders towards us.”

His concluding sentence aggregated the message: “Let the northerners rise now and save their region, its future and the future of their young people. And end the shame of weakness.”

Before now, they have prided themselves as the princes of Nigeria’s political space. They are the astute politicians, who are born to rule. Southerners, particularly Ndigbo, are ridiculed for their supposed lack of political dexterity.

As Agbese further noted, they object to power shifting to the South in 2023 and conveniently forget that their people are losers even as they hold the reins of power.

But it would appear that Northern leaders, hearkening to Agbese’s harsh admonition, are no longer content with playing the ostrich, having realised, it seems, the need to wake up and smell the coffee. Their utterances in recent times seem to suggest that they have realized that the problems, which they deliberately created, are not going to fix themselves.

Rather than blame the South for their self-inflicted woes, they are beginning to apportion blames appropriately to themselves. That is self-awakening and it is gratifying.

The herdsmen who are raping women, abducting students, killing and maiming innocent people are Fulani. And they need to be called out by their own people instead of giving quit notices and threatening fire and brimstone when other ethnic nationalities who could not understand why the North is tolerating and pampering such malcontents act in self-defense.

Completely flustered by the rising spate of kidnappings, killings, and attacks in Taraba State, the Emir of Muri, Abbas Tafida, a Fulani, on July 22, issued a 30-day ultimatum to Fulani terrorists to vacate forests in the state or be forced to do so.

“Our Fulani herdsmen in the forests, you came into this state and we accepted you, why then will you be coming to towns and villages to kidnap residents, even up to the extent of raping our women?

“Because of this unending menace, every Fulani herdsman in this state has been given 30 days ultimatum to vacate the forests. We are tired of having sleepless nights and the hunger alone in the land is enormous and we will not allow it to continue,” he said.

That was unprecedented. Before then, it was a sacrilege for the Fulani to call out one of their own no matter how heinous the conduct.

Then on Tuesday, August 17, Northern leaders that included the 1993 presidential candidate of the National Republican Convention (NRC), Bashir Tofa; former FCT minister, Dr. Aliyu Modibbo Umar; former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Yayale Ahmed; former chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Attahiru Jega; former Governor of Kaduna State, Ahmed Maikarfi; former Minister of Defence and National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Haliru Bello; former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Umar Ghali Na’abba; former Minister of Interior and ex-Chief of Army Staff, Gen. Abdulrahman Dambazzau; former governors of Sokoto and Kwara States, Attahiru Bafarawa and Abdulfatah Ahmed; etc., met in Abuja to acknowledge the obvious: All is not well with the North.

For the first time, Northern leaders are genuinely concerned that the region is faced with existential threats of their own making. They are neither blaming Ndigbo – their bête noire – nor the Yoruba.

“We have no difficulty admitting all is not well with Northern Nigeria and we are taking primary or vicarious responsibility for the current state of affairs. We must all – leaders, followers and passive onlookers – accept our share of responsibility but beyond that, we must collectively resolve to take action and remedy what went wrong going forward,” Tofa, who spoke on behalf of the group, said.

He acknowledged that “the state of insecurity across Nigeria is worrisome, but the state of insecurity in Northern Nigeria has reached existential proportions, threatening to render the region hostile to civilized existence.”

The truth is that insecurity is not just threatening to render, it has already rendered most parts, if not the entire North hostile to civilized existence.

This Tofa-led parley will be the beginning of redemption for the North if the leaders are sincere.

The North remains the weakest link in Nigeria’s developmental chain. And it is a problem caused by the disingenuousness of its leaders and their perception of power. They must fix that for the sake of the region, in particular, and Nigeria, generally.

* Amaechi is the Editor-In-Chief of The Niche Newspaper