**our leaders helped themselves, their immediate families, friends & cronies with the public resources.
**the Northern system glorifies and encourages endemic poverty.
**Why are billionaires in the North not the type that give back to society?
**ACF & Governors discusses only, Resources Sharing, Zoning, political power.
**they discuss the turbaning of dubious individuals & marriage of Generals’ daughters to Ministers’ sons.
AN interesting article titled ‘’ Derivation and Deprivation: Why the North Is Poor’’ by a certain Ross Alabo-George which made the rounds in various newspapers and blogs has generated a cacophony of record breaking on-line responses, reactions and rejoinders. A corollary to the ‘‘disquisition’’, as its author christened it, is the number of articles that have come to life with the theme of the north’s usurpation of the Niger Delta oil.
The Boko Haram menace has further compounded our national woes and like old times everything is being viewed through the Muslim/ Christian and / the Hausa, Ibo or Yoruba prism. The torrential reactions / responses from the Lagos-Ibadan axis; and of the south–south, south-east axis see Ross’s piece as a liberating one; a long awaited elixir to damn the north (both its elite and commoners).
Aliyu called for the re- evaluation of the revenue allocation formula that gives a ‘’whopping’’ 13% to the south south and creates two Nigerias: a prosperous south and an impoverished north. But aside his loquaciousness, how has he changed the lives of Niger people with the ‘’little’’ he gets from Abuja every month?
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (Kano): On January 10, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi made a most morally ambiguous, and professionally controversial donation of N100 million to victims of Kano State’s Boko Haram bomb blast. Kano is Sanusi’s home state of which he is a prince and nurses an open ambition of becoming its emir.
I cannot help but ask myself what goes on in the minds of our wealthy Alhajis and retired Generals. How about the Mac Arthur Foundation, Carnegie, Rockefeller, etc and their interventions all around us?
Would building a dozen world class primary and secondary schools in Dangote’s ward or local government with the best of teachers and facilities be such a reprehensible act? Ironically it had to take Rochas Okorocha miles away, in Imo State, to build a befitting school in Kano and another one in Jos (which by the way is tuition free in addition to free lunch given to the students). How many Kanawa has Dangote sponsored to Harvard to go and study contemporary entrepreneurship or to Princeton; George Washington?
The same applies to Alhaji Dantata the construction mogul (now of blessed memory). How many people from his local government did he sponsor to go and study civil engineering in Paris, Germany or Italy? How many people did Rilwanu Lukman sponsor to go and study petroleum engineering or renewable / alternative/ clean energy having been in the petroleum industry both on the national and international scenes for ages? How many young men and women do these people mentor to follow in their footsteps? Who for the love of God inspires and influences their thought processes? How about the Abachas, the IBBs the Abdusalamis, the Atikus, the TY Danjumas, the David Marks, the Bamanga Tukurs etc.
Is it not only logical and self-evident that a mass literacy revolution was and is still the way to go? Is the South West today not reaping the massive literacy investment of Awolowo? What then exactly do our leaders discuss at their ACF meetings? What exactly do the 19 northern governors discuss when they meet – political power? to zone or not to zone? the perpetuation of PDP till eternity? the turbaning of dubious individuals and those of questionable characters with traditional titles (ably rubber-stamped by colluding emirs)? the marriage of Generals’ daughters to Ministers’ sons? The continued oppression, deprivation and neglect is sadly responsible for the menace of Boko Haram and as it were, it shows no signs of abating.
The thinking that the elite could amass wealth and unabashedly live in opulence next door to life snatching penury; send only their kids off to London, France and Dubai to come back as the new breed of oppressors to continue from where their parents stopped oppressing our parents and live in privileged exclusivity is being threatened. Now that we all cannot sleep with our eyes closed because we don’t know where the next bombs will go off, the north should as a matter of sincere urgency go back to the drawing board and seek redemption from itself. Time is not on our side.
As the north battles with its grip on political power, it would be great to take a close look at every other aspect of the Nigerian project where it trails behind the south and east. The following are my observations. – Aliyu is a Masters Student of Public and International Affairs, University of Lagos.
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