Northern Nigeria. From crisis to deceased.
I have long wondered if anyone understands the full import of the ceaseless crisis in parts of Northern Nigeria. The thousands of people that have lost their lives to Boko Haram and Ansaru terrorist groups are not the only victims. No. The tonnes of infrastructure burnt, damaged and destroyed are not the only capital losses. No. The present challenges are only a precursor to even greater damage. Why? When you kill the young or destroy infrastructure you essentially put a bullet in the head of your future. It is easier to destroy a thing than to build it. The man dies in all those who keep silent in the face of tyranny and oppression so all those who keep silent when a brother or sister joins a terrorist group become their own undertakers. The economic dastardisation is even worse. What we are witnessing is a gradual extinction in the economy of the north. The economy is being set back by decades while the south continues to roll up its sleeves and progress.
This would be sad if it was not plainly suicidal. Well the guest writer today puts it much more eloquently so i will leave it to him.
This would be sad if it was not plainly suicidal. Well the guest writer today puts it much more eloquently so i will leave it to him.
Edifying Elucidations By Okey Ikechukwu.
Last week, Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger State said that northern
Nigeria might become extinct within the next few years, unless security
is quickly addressed in the area. But it may not be that easy, since the
North will more likely ‘breakdown’, rather than break-up. Extinction is
a very easy and even possibly comfortable exit, because it is just a
matter of lying down to die. But breakdown implies the collapse of
everything that defines modern living and civil society. That is why
Governor Aliyu said: “Let us not allow this place degenerate into a
territory filled with wild bands, or pockets of armed groups and
neighbourhood warlords who seize and terrorise various sections of the
killing fields.”
A week earlier, Rev. William Okoye, in his sermon at the Aso Rock
chapel, titled “Be the Change You Want to See”, cited the example of
William Wilberforce who resolved at the age of 25 to help improve the
world by dedicating his life to the abolition of slavery and the
“reformation of manners”. Wilberforce wanted to change the thinking of
society in an era when loose morals, corrupt business practices and
absence of religious faith reigned. He ended up more successful than
many religious and political leaders, because he lived his convictions!
The call today is for leaders, particularly northern leaders, to face
the real issues affecting northern Nigeria, which is not to say that the
crisis in the North is a ‘northern’ problem. The region helps sustain
the national food chain, among other things. As it is being quietly shut
down by all manner of socio-political forces that are finally snuffing
out local economies, so are the ripples dis-contouring the nation. The
North was already choking and reeling from the neglect and abandonment
occasioned by oil wealth, as it watched its dugout wells traditionally
used to dye both fabrics and hides for centuries shrink by over 80% in
the 80s and 90s. The wells have practically disappeared today, along
with the manufacturers of local dies and related trades that blossomed
because of this single economic activity. The artworks usually sold by
mallams are either no more or a rumoured to still be available in
isolated places. The groundnuts are gone, so let us not talk about its
pyramids! Perhaps the Chief Servant may wish to note that much has
already gone into extinction ahead of the people!
Today, the quantity and quality of baskets of tomatoes and other
produce coming from the well irrigated, all-year farms in the North have
declined precipitously. Jos that can produce enough flowers to put all
of Kenya’s globally celebrated flower exports to shame is an economic
no-man’s-land as I write. The people who used to earn daily and monthly
pay from these farms are idle, earning zero income. The percentage of
the overall population still earning any income at all has decreased,
even as their daily needs, demands, hunger, number of children and other
dependents have increased. Farmers of the popular and fast-selling
Irish potato and the local sugarcane, whose wares used to come down
south in long rows of bulk haulage vehicles, have a similar story.
Besides the handful of children at police checkpoints on highways who
carry anaemic-looking supplies, marketers of Kuli-Kuli, which is a
by-product of groundnut processing, are now rare.
In the midst of these clear signs of danger and socio-economic sickness
unto death, the Chad Basin has been shrinking for decades. Some
surrounding villages have moved close to 50 kilometres away from their
original locations, following the receding waters and taking contrived
national boundaries in vain. The demise of local economies also means
that old skills are not being transferred, even as new ones are not
being learnt. Since plunder, bombing and related ‘capacities’ are not
21st century national development skills, there are dreadful prospects
for an environment with a rising population of restive youth with
limited survival skills.
Meanwhile, the political elite is too complacent to see its undertakers
in the neighbourhood. The words of Sultan Uthman Dan-Fodio, “Conscience
is an open wound, only truth can heal it”, should spur them to identify
and heal the ‘wounds’ of the region. The current Sultan, in his
convocation lecture at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, two years ago,
said: “It is time we asked ourselves how, and why, we allow our sanity
to take leave of us at very critical moments of our nation’s history.”
He followed up with this question: “How can we reconcile our perceived
religiosity with our readiness to rent asunder all that God declared
holy and sacrosanct? How can we register any appreciable level of
development when we cannot even boast of the requisite level of social
stability and harmony to lead normal lives?” This is food for thought
indeed!
Leadership is the issue here and leaders of a decimated environment are
the primary targets of any unrest, as shown by world history, the Arab
uprising and even the last fuel subsidy riots, which saw hitherto
deified institutions and persons in the North being attacked. The
experience of the Shah of Iran shows that local imams, with their more
regular (and mandatory daily) contact with the bulk of the population,
can easily run many northern political leaders out of town. The
statistical evidence of an unacceptably large and growing population of
the indigent in the North suggests that the area is sitting on a keg of
gunpowder. That is what Governor Aliyu is saying. That is one of the
many good points that can be inferred from Okoye’s sermon. That was the
point made by Gen. T. Y. Danjuman a few days ago. That was Gen. Ibrahim
Babangida’s point at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, last week.
The word of wisdom from my now world-popular cousin, Obarakunime Obioma
(who they call Barack Obama in the US), whose thoughts themed Okoye’s
sermon, invites us to note that: “Change will not come if we wait for
some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting
for. We are the change that we seek”. Northern leaders, beginning with
Aliyu whose understanding of power and public administration is not open
to question, must use their influence, knowledge and authority to guide
society and become standard bearers for what is right. This is in
addition to addressing capacity and economic challenges in a sustainable
manner.
Leaders are the primary role models on values and the general direction
of society. The Sultan likened a leader to “A pure spring of water”,
describing the populace as water wheels that receive what comes from the
spring for distribution. If the spring is pure and always brings out
clean, pure water, even the dirtiest water wheels will become clean over
time. But once it is the spring that is unclean, then the water wheels
are doomed to eternal dirtiness, stench and grime. This means that those
who use their positions of leadership to wreak havoc on humanity, or
leave undone what they should do, are like the impure spring.
Okoye, too, observed that believers and leaders are the salt and the
light of the world. Just as salt flavours food and also preserves (Matt.
5:13) and light illuminates, exposes, expels darkness and shows the way
((Matt. 5:14–15), so should leaders be the pointers to all things good
and right. Hear his conclusion: “Lack of consistently God-centred,
people-oriented, focused and purposeful leadership have been identified
as to be at the heart of Nigeria’s problems”.
Borno, Kano, Jos, Kaduna and several northern cities have lost the bulk
of their resident populations. That missing population now lives in
less troubled and less troublesome areas where their love can sleep in
peace on a regular basis. No one wants to go to work in the morning and
come to find the streets inaccessible, their houses burnt or their
children killed? They love their old neighbourhoods, which are part of
their personal and family history, but circumstances have forced them to
consider these places too unsafe for their peace of mind and for the
upbringing of their children. As they shipped out with their businesses
and hitherto thriving bonds of friendship, their money started
contributing to the growth of other neighbourhoods. Their rents have
gone to new landlords. They now buy the midnight candle, the stick of
sugarcane, the occasional kolanut, the sweets, the tin of tomato, etc,
from their new neighbours – far away from the old.
Landlords now have fewer tenants and get less income every month.
Property value, including the cost of residential accommodation, has
dropped. So has the income of house owners, the level of living and the
ability to solve routine family problems. Shopkeepers, suya and kilishi
sellers, butchers, tailors, shoemakers, fruit sellers, etc now have
fewer customers. Fewer customers mean less income. Less income means the
inability to repair a leaking roof, or pay school fees, or pay hospital
bills. It could also mean avoidable deaths in the family. All because
those who visit violence on their living environment fail to see that it
pays no one in the end.
Imagine a landlord who took a bank loan or overdraft and mortgaged his
house as collateral to start a long-gestation business and who expected
to repay half of the loan through the rent he will collect this April.
Is he not finished? His friendly tenants left because they were tired of
running away and coming back from time to time. Poverty, real grinding,
remorseless poverty, is settling in – to eventually consume the islands
of affluence in sight and within reach. These things are usually
imperceptible at first, but the signs will soon become too obvious for
anyone to ignore or deny – as Babangida Aliyu has pointed out.
Even if, in truth, the short-sighted mischief-makers do not see the
wider negative results of their actions, the people should know, the
elders should know and the religious leaders have a duty to rescue their
very names in all of this. No community can stand forth, beat its chest
and say that its selling point is insecurity. The North should quickly
scotch the fires that are scorching the sense of ‘community’ in many
places.
He who has ears to hear let him hear!
I commend the author of this article, and you Nonso for making such an insightful and thought provoking piece available to us (the readers)
ReplyDeleteThis write-up really lays bear my long held opinion about the Northern crisis (as I like to call it). Like a good Economist, the author has presented the immediate, foreseeable and unforeseeable impact of this crisis that's devouring Northern Nigeria. Alas, I believe that what is happening in the North, is an aggregation of all the ills meted out to Southerners and those of other religious groups, that has taken place over the years.
For a very long time...at any possible opportunity, or even at the slightest of provocations, Southerners have been murdered in their hundreds and even thousands under the guise of religious and ethnic riots in the North. The Polgroms may have been lost to the younger generation of Ibo extraction, but it remains fresh in the minds of those that had to live through its horrors. The Northern leadership and its citizens never really did anything to stop or even decry the violence. Boko Haram is to me a result of letting actions of violence targeting a defined group go unabated just because it does not concern you or it serves your selfish political interests. It kind of fits the proverb that if you fail to call to order an unruly child that attacks your neighbours, one day that child will attack you.
The harm the insurgents are causing Northern Nigeria will reverberate through to future generations of that region, and the age old excuse that it is Jonathan's fault will simply not do. Boko Haram and other extremist groups thrive because certain Politicians see the opportunity in them... Whatever that opportunity is, only God knows. The newspapers have been replete with stories of arms and bomb manufacturing equipment found in the homes of some Northern Politicians; how can those whose responsibility it is to stand for peace and justice, fan the embers of violence, I simply don't know. All I can say is that they will reap what they sow...one day their people will hold them to account.
Very well said!
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