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By Joel Nwokeoma<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A visibly terrified and disappointed Sultan of Sokoto and President of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Alhaji Muhammad Sa\u00e1d Abubakar III, recently turned in a damning verdict about life and living in the North. A well-known pro-establishment monarch, the Sultan declared that the region is the worst place to live in Nigeria. Years ago, Emir Sanusi Muhammad II had labelled the North \u201cthe face of poverty\u201d in Nigeria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking at the 4th Quarter Meeting of the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council, which he incidentally co-chairs, Sultan Abubakar lamented that the North has been overrun by bandits making life a daily deadly experience for the residents. In a region the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), contrary to the federal character principle, chose 90% of the heads of the security agencies from since 2015. Some critics say the President was swayed more by provincialism than competence and merit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe North is not secure at all; in fact, it is the worst place to be in this country because bandits go about in villages with their AK47 and nobody talks to them (meaning, security is non-existent). They stop at the markets and buy things and even collect change with their weapons,\u201d he said. This is an undisguised vote of no confidence in the Buhari regime and its capacity to secure lives and property of Nigerians from one of its most notable supporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier in his speech, the Sultan made a chilling revelation: \u201cA couple of weeks ago, 76 people were killed in Sokoto by bandits in a day; it is not seen as a story because I went there with the governor of Sokoto. You don\u2019t hear these stories because it happened in the North and we don\u2019t have the media that is strong enough to bring out these atrocities by the bandits; so, people think that the North is secure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Incidentally, as if to lend credence to the Sultan\u2019s lamentation, exactly 10 days later, Boko Haram gunmen on motorbikes slaughtered dozens of farmers in rice fields near the village of Zabarmari outside Borno State\u2019s capital, Maiduguri. The faction loyal to Abubakar Shekau said in a video on Tuesday that it was \u201cresponsible for what happened (killing of 78 farmers) \u2026 especially in Zabarmari\u201d because \u201cthe farmers arrested and handed one of our brothers to the Nigerian Army.\u201d Asking no one in particular, the terrorist sect queried, \u201cYou thought you would apprehend our brethren and hand him over to the military and live in peace?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What has followed the \u201csenseless killing\u201d, as Buhari rightly called it, is a staccato of condemnations, from the United Nations to the Catholic Pontiff and to some northern socio-political groups. While the UN Security Council condemned the terrorist killing in the \u201cstrongest terms\u201d and harped on \u201cthe need to bring perpetrators, organisers, financiers and sponsors of these reprehensible acts of terrorism to justice\u201d, Pope Francis offered his \u201cprayers for Nigeria, where blood has unfortunately been spilled once more in a terrorist attack.\u201d The Northern Elders Forum was more assertive that, \u201cUnder this administration, life has lost its value, and more and more citizens are coming under the influence of criminals. We do not see any evidence of a willingness on the part of President Buhari to honour his oath to provide security over Nigerians.\u201d The group threw a challenge to the President to resign for failing to protect Nigerians, reminding him that, \u201cIn civilised nations, leaders who fail so spectacularly to provide security will do the honourable thing and resign. Our voices have been raised without pause for a long time against pervasive insecurity in our region.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Strangely enough, when the northern leaders met in Kaduna last October on the aftermath of the #EndSARS protests, what engaged their mind was how to regulate the social media space while dismissively referring to the nationwide call by Nigerian youths, through the protests, for an end to police brutality and disbandment of the rogue police unit, SARS, as \u201csubversive actions\u201d geared towards \u201cregime change\u201d. It tellingly didn\u2019t spare any thought on workable strategies to deal decisively with the extant security and socio-economic challenges which have viciously hamstrung the region over the years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, as scary and brutish as the living realities in the North have become recently, as attested to by the seemingly endless reign of rural banditry, insurgency and orgy of killings, the future isn\u2019t rosy either, the region\u2019s vice-like desperation for and grip on political power at the centre since independence notwithstanding. The northern political elite deliberately superintended and consistently nurtured the multiplication of misery and illiteracy in their region over the years. Leena Koni Hoffmann, a political sociologist at the Chatham House, a UK think tank, attested to this when she said that a typical girl\u2019s life in northern Nigeria \u201crevolves around marriage and children\u201d. It is estimated that over 50% of girls between ages 18 and 20 in the region are given out in marriage. What makes it more worrisome, she said, is that 75% of them can neither read nor write! According to a 2018 report by EDUCELEB, a non-profit education advocacy group, out of a national average of 59.3% female literacy rate for Nigerians between 15 and 24 years old, the North-West trailed on 38% followed by the North-East (41%) and the North-Central (62%). On the hand, the South-East led with 95.4%, followed by the South-South (94%) and the South-West (92.6%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Similarly, a 2018 survey by UNICEF estimated that the population of out-of-school children in Nigeria had risen from 10.5 million to 13.2 million, the highest in the world. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo recently said the number had spiked to 14 million, with a majority of them found in the North, scavenging for survival as homeless almajiri children on the streets. A plan to reform the almajirinci system by the 19 northern governors to give them hope for better living and save the region from inevitable social unrest is currently mired in equivocation.
Aside from the over 36,000 people killed and two million displaced since Boko Haram launched its jihadi insurgency in northeast Nigeria in 2009, Senator Ali Ndume said there are 60,000 orphaned children in the Internally Displaced Persons\u2019 camps in Borno State alone. You can only guess what the future holds both for them and the region. I adumbrated on this point in a presentation I made at the conference organised by the African Peacebuilding Network of the Social Science Research Council in collaboration with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC, themed, Insecurity, Conflict and Militancy in the Maghreb and Sahel Regions, in March 2017. There is a thriving ambience for insurgency and banditry in the Northern Nigeria socio-economic cum religio-cultural milieu that its governance system needs to blunt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is not talking about the infant and maternal mortality rates in the region. Experts say that of the 576 deaths per 100,000 live births in Nigeria which indicate that maternal deaths are responsible for about a third of all deaths among women of reproductive age, \u201cthe situation is much worse within the northern parts of the country, where the maternal mortality rate is estimated to be over 1,000 deaths per 100,000 live births.\u201d The story is not different in the infant mortality and under-5 mortality rates estimated at 69 deaths per 1,000 live births and 128 deaths per 1000 live births respectively. This has been like that for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A recent analysis from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations indicated that of the 16 states and the Federal Capital Territory reported to be suffering from food insecurity in Nigeria, 15 are from the North. They are Borno, Adamawa, Yobe, Benue, Gombe, Taraba, Katsina, Jigawa, Kano, Bauchi, Plateau, Kaduna, Kebbi, Sokoto, Niger and the FCT. It is obvious that the debilitating subsisting malnutrition and hunger are accentuated by the long-drawn insurgency in the region that has now made farming a risky adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It bears noting that the sad existential realities in the North are a culmination of decades of governance missteps by a self-serving elite driven by primordial considerations and progressive inaction. The preference to promote religion above human development is debilitating and amounts to great harm not just to the region but also to humanity. For all they care, Hisbah can openly destroy hundreds of cartons of beer belonging to those not bound by their religious obligations, but investment in education and health to improve the welfare of the people is abominable. Apparently, power acquisition for the sake of it trumps everything. This is sadly so because this has translated to nothing other than monumental tragedy for the people with gory ripple effects on other parts of the nation. Sadder still is the fact that an asphyxiating North is NOT cosy with the idea of a restructured Nigeria, so we all don\u2019t die off cheaply with an overwhelmed centralised policing structure and statist economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Originally published at Punch<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n jnwokeoma@punchng.com, 090130035000<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Joel Nwokeoma A visibly terrified and disappointed Sultan of Sokoto and President of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Alhaji Muhammad Sa\u00e1d Abubakar III, recently turned in a damning verdict about life and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[802],"class_list":["post-3655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polity-politics-governance","tag-northern-nigeria"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n