By USSIJU MEDANER
History will not be fair to us when we compare what our region has become of today with the legacies of our forebears. Today, I see a region that has become synonymous with the myth of a dog walking in the company of goats or an eagle picking insects with the hen. We have lost our identity and it is about time we retraced our steps and address the anomaly to return to the pinnacle where we rightly belong.
There is hunger in the North which does not know religion or political affiliations. It is biting hard and it is hitting hard on our people, except perhaps for those at the corridors of power. There is only one cause: our neglect of the needful when it is needed most. Even as our population grows, we move farther away from agriculture and the production of food, thereby creating a system whereby the forces of demand and supply, market prices of major staple foods continue to increase as the farming population decreases and innovations in agricultural practices become more theoretical without the required implementation. A region positioned by nature to feed as much as the entire sub region of West Africa is on its knees begging for food for its population.
Why? Because our elites and the political office holders are busy accumulating personal wealth instead of organising the region and investing in agriculture, developing infrastructure and reviving industries. The north arguably holds the richest men in the whole of our continent and by virtue of our population, and the number of local government areas we have, we receive the highest allocations from the national purse, yet, we cannot account for these monies in real time, let alone showcase sustainable investments.
Despite our abundant blessings, we are rated, unbelievably, as the region with the highest level of poverty in Nigeria. According to the World Bank, 87% of poor Nigerians live in our region. How can a region with so much potential also be rated as the poorest. The bulk of our children are either Almajirai, who have become unengaged youths and roadside beggars, or are forced into banditry and sundry crimes by our negative actions and inactions as leaders and elites. We raised a population without skills, and recorded an almost zero economic growth index, failing to take advantage of the huge market our population offers. The purchasing power of our people is as low as it can be, and we are breeding crime and insecurity as a collective.
But our problem is not just hunger, gross unemployment that has precipitated insecurity is upon us, and just as much as with food insecurity, we are a region that shouldn’t have anything to do with unemployment. We are damned so blessed with major resources required for regional development. Our population and youth strength would perhaps be the best of our endowments. Then we are blessed with good arable lands of immense size, enough to feed almost the entire West African sub region and even beyond.
We are blessed with all sorts of solid minerals, basic raw materials for technology development, advancement in medicine and pharmaceuticals. There is hardly any solid mineral that is not lying fallow, or being abused at some corners of our region. We are blessed with aquatic bodies and life, enough to satisfy the needs of our people and still constitute a major foreign revenue earner for our country.
Yet, in the midst of all these abundance, we are a population of wasting youths, hungry children and directionless elders. We are wallowing in multidimensional poverty created by multidimensional lack. And as a people, we have become more and more of beggars, waiting for handouts from within and overseas to survive.
We cannot afford to allow this undesirable condition to persist. Our region, the northern region, is too blessed to become home to impoverished children, and harbour to criminals. It is time we changed the narrative. It is about time we harvested our strength as a region and set our youthful population towards regional development that will reposition our region and restore all our lost glory.
How do we drive industrialization, create jobs for our teeming population, redefine the standard of living of our people and place our region in the position of respect it so deserves. Our leaders are sleeping and in disarray. The Northern Senators Forum that should be the vocal voice organising the prospect of the region has become conspicuously polarised and lack the united front to represent the absolute interest of the region. Our governors are political jobbers who use political office for personal enrichment and dominance of our people. This is the time for reawakening. We can salvage what is broken, but we must first take responsibility for our failures.
Our region that was once a beacon of industrialization; with boisterous textile factories, agricultural produce and many others, is suddenly empty. We have become a carricature of our real selves. We now boast only of political weight without corresponding political benefits to our people. We are now a region that holds dear to nepotism and sentimental selection of hands to represent us where it matters most. We have underrated intellectual capacity and underutilized our best brains. At a time when the whole world is harvesting the full resources of intellectual capacity, we are making appointments based on sentiments, relationships and intentional relegation of people who should be in the driver’s seat because we don’t like them or we don’t want them to rise. We must let go of this celebrated nepotism,we must access our best hands, bring them to the forefront to reorganise our union.
As a matter of urgency, we must return to the drawing table and redraft our region’s development agenda. At the top of this agenda must be a comprehensive plan to prioritise investment in agricultural business. This will necessitate all our leaders across the spectrum to unite and vigorously develop the agricultural potential of our region. They neccessarily must engage all resources and accept nothing short of optimum cultivation of available arable land to produce for sustainable development of the north and it’s people.
As a re region on a united front, we must empower all our farmers, create accesses to inputs as easy as they can come, reject in its totality the introduction of all forms of genetically modified seeds and other inputs, consciously organise markets across the region, the country and the West Africa sub region for our agricultural products, to ensure that both our people and region benefit maximally from the fresh awakening and intervention.
From here, we should draw a roadmap for the reindustrialization of the northern region. It is unfortunate that years ago, the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo took us through the path that destroyed the industrial base and capacity of the region by handing over majority of our existing industries to non investors and cronies, who grounded them, yet, we must rise from the ruins. From our agricultural products, we must emerge a region with huge agro processing industrial capacity. Our textile industry must boom again. We must invest hugely in technological advancement, sponsor our youths to acquire all the skill needed to set up the region as a beacon of technology. We must resolve to end insecurity in our enclaves enough to guarantee flow of investments across the globe to our region. These will not happen because we desire them, we must consciously organise ourselves to bring them to us.
It is about time we shut out the arbitrary harnessing of our solid minerals across corridors of the region. We can no longer allow selfish and brutal elements among us corner our resources and perpetuate insecurity to maintain their holds on our resources. The leaders of the north must in agreement say no and establish structures to protect both the resources and the people of the region. The future of our region depends on our setting the pace for a fresh industrialization. We must collaborate effectively with the federal government to jointly harness all solid minerals in northern Nigeria. We should agree on investment pathways that give us access to the products the Ajaokuta steel in Kogi state offers, recognising that steel power is a bedrock of industrialization.
Finally, this is our region, our fatherland. We cannot continue to wait for the federal government to end insecurity for us. It is about time we agreed as a people that enough is enough. It is time we engaged every weapon at our disposal to end insurgency and terminate banditry among us. We cannot afford to allow the North East, most especially to slide back to terror regime, given the fresh incident of suicide bombing we witnessed recently.
This piece is a wake up call to the governors and northern elite, our representatives at the National Assembly and all opinion moulders among our people. We must agree to transform all our strengths to positive outcome that define the competitive advantage of our region, using our population, resources and doggedness that uniquely separate us from others. It is upon our leaders to change our storyline. Let this same north of today that cannot feed itself become the channel from which nations and territories run to feed themselves. It is upon our leaders now, to save our future by organising our present youth population to become the cornerstone of the great achievements we desire for our tomorrow. We must organise ourselves, so that our story in the nearest future would be shaped to the best it can be, of our most useful resources, our children, our youths and our natural endowments. Let us transform our land to a land of many possibilities, with abundant health care access, perfect and quality education, a land of tourism, producers of technology and a happy place to live in, not only by our people, but by the global community at large.
We can do it, because we are the offspring of a never-say-no forebears.
GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA!
