Arewa, ‘the sick man of Nigeria’, needs to heal itself

Since the advent of the Tinubu administration, the North has been gripped by a sense of anxiety and foreboding. This feeling has grown exponentially as President Tinubu rolls out his policies which had been eliciting lamentations right across the region.

First were the twin policies of removal of petrol subsidies and naira devaluation. When at some point of the pump price of petrol spiked up around N1500 at some places in the northern part of the country, there were outcries that the Tinubu administration was out to cripple transportation which is one of the life bloods of economic and social activities in the north.

Then came President Tinubu’s ill-considered decision to militarily intervene on behalf of the Economic Community of West African states, (ECOWAS) in Niger Republic to restore civilian President Mohammed Bazoum following his overthrow by the military. Part of preparations for this entailed closing off Nigeria’s long border with Niger which at once disrupted trade along the communities on both sides of the border. Although northern Senators voted against the military intervention proposed by President Tinubu, it was not enough however as the borders remained closed and millions of small, medium and large northern traders have been losing a lot of custom and money.

Within the past year, Tinubu’s lop-sided appointments which favoured his ethnic Yoruba kinsmen mainly just like his predecessor Muhammadu Buhari who also did same for his northerners’ elicited ironic criticism from northern elites and spokesmen.

The latest grouse northerners have been come to hold against President Tinubu is on the proposed Tax Reform Bill which is now receiving attention at the National Assembly. Without exception the governors of 19 Northern states, Emirs, Intelligentsia, Clerics etc have all vehemently risen against the bill. The predominant view is that the bill is targeted against the North in order to whittle down the revenues that should come to the various states in the region in favour of Lagos.

Indeed today as a result of these developments, if one were to take a random sample of opinions in the north on President Tinubu, chances are that he will score very low in the perception of most northerners.

But realistically how much is the animus felt against President Tinubu by northerners justifiable? Have northerners themselves examined critically and tried to separate the rhetoric and reality of the issues that now confront them?

A look at the existential issues in the North will help provide answers.

On any given day in any given city in the north at traffic intersections and in many parts of town, one is confronted by the ubiquitous presence of hordes of beggars chorusing a litany of want. As far I know this has become an acceptable and permanent fixture of northern life which predates my birth and which attracts little or no social stigma or sanction. Indeed it has become such a lucrative industry such that generations of practitioners having been born into it have devised ways to continue it.

Another area has to do with Education. Unlike in the southern parts of the country where the pursuit of modern education is revered and regarded as a vehicle for social mobility, in the north modern education in the north initially had a stigma of being labelled as an instrument decadent western values which should not be encouraged to flourish. And when existential circumstances compelled the north to embrace and promote modern education the stigma attached to it as well as the entrenched class and ethnic identity and structures of the north robbed the acquisition of education of its ability to be that vehicle of social mobility and change as it is in the south.

By far the major contradiction afflicting the north is the failure and resistance to change from a conservative society to a modern one. The north likes to cling to its once glorious past which ran from the days of Othman dan Fodio to the days of Ahmadu Bello. This past was organized and defined largely by Islamic ethos and through the years the Islamic aristocracy comprised of rulers and clerics took the trouble to resist modern western influences and values into northern Nigeria. Whatever western influences that were allowed in were moderated to suit the system but not to upstage it.

But today in the face of aggressive intrusion of modern western influences the North has found that it cannot continue to resist changes. And what is more the North is finding to its chagrin that the necessary reforms it resisted in bringing about all these years to its existential challenges now constitute a burden not only to its progress and growth but to Nigeria.

Thus in its current state, the North has not been able to deal with social issues like the incidence of begging and destitution, social and security related issues like banditry, kidnapping and terrorism etc. But the North should also be worried that the unity that once existed among its various component parts no longer holds. The fault lines of ethnicity and religion have widened to a point where the Christian minority parts no longer want to be politically identified with the North.

When southerners tag the North as ‘’lazy and parasitic’’ and dragging Nigeria behind in terms of development, they are actually referring to the North’s continuing clinging to retrogressive conservatism which has reduced the region to a laggard in the Nigerian scheme of things.

And much as northern elites have been in denial over the state of things in the region, the reality cannot be hidden. From 1999 to date, the 19 states of the North have cumulatively received trillions in revenues but this is hardly reflected in physical and human capital development in the entire region. All the indices have proven that despite the abundance of human and natural resources, the North remains the poverty capital of the world and one of the most dangerous places to live on earth. For all practical purposes, the North is ‘’the sick man of Nigeria’’.

It is the North in this weakened state that presents Tinubu with an opportunity to push through his agenda on his own terms. Unlike Presidents Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan who ruled under the constant fear that northerners would undermine them, Tinubu entertains no such anxieties perhaps in the knowledge that the North is too weakened by self-inflicted body blows and too disunited by deep religious and ethnic differences to mount an effective counterpoise against him. This is not the North of 1966 that swiftly united to save itself and the country after its leaders were cut down earlier in that year. The North of today is riven by sharp social contradictions that have been left to fester to the point where the custodians and elites are at once clueless and ineffectual in closing the existential issues within the North and facing up to the challenges ranged against it in the Nigerian political firmament.

What remains for the North is to critically examine its current state and courageously apply itself to an honest and realistic search for practical and workable solutions to its issues. In this regard the North should imbibe the lessons of reforms that turned similar retrogressive conservative Islamic societies into modern progressive ones. It is time to end the meaningless routine rituals of ostentation and flamboyance in Arewa House Kaduna in the name of looking for solutions that ends with none.

The North has a stark choice between getting real to change itself by itself in order to restore its relevance, or having the change brought to it by forces out of its control and hence losing its relevance eventually in the scheme of things in Nigeria.

Gadu can be reached via [email protected] and 08035355706 (Texts only)