3 hours ago
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In the aftermath of the calamitous and disastrously mangled #endbadgovernanceprotests which in early August, 2024, had consumed some towns and cities in Northern Nigeria, I was exposed to discussions online about what may have led to these unfortunate events and the fate that has befallen the region as a consequence. One of them in particular (Hunger Protest, Violence and the Russian Flag: Unfolding Events in Northern Nigeria, issued by my brother and friend, Hussaini Abdu, PhD.) was thought-provoking. He ably and cogently offered a distillation of some of the core drivers of this unfortunate turn of events in especially Northern Nigeria.
Now that the dust has settled(?), I hasten to restate the same points, albeit, from another, more personal angle: Without minimising the plethora of factors offered to explain – and perhaps serve as a cure to some aspects of – the driver being highlighted, it is my contention that as political, economic and civil society elites of northern extraction, we (yes, many of us) have for too long pretended, ignored, overlooked or simply downplayed and/or failed to collaboratively confront and proactively stem in creative ways, the slowly germinating seeds of youth restlessness and their attendant restiveness, across huge swathes of the region. And this has been the story of the region, going back over four decades.
In the late 80s and into the 90s, I was privileged to have spent quite a lot of time in the company of the former Military Governor of Northern Nigeria and Ciroman Katsina, Major General Hassan Usman Katsina (retd), of blessed memory. At just about every private and public function that he had opportunity to speak, he would openly and loudly lament the sorry, degenerating state of parental and community leadership, and the gradual failure and erosion of family and societal values in the North. Citizens everywhere would often praise and thank him for his forthrightness about the issues. Thereafter, and again and again, we all returned to our businesses as usual.
The situation continued to worsen within the North by an insipid, vapid and outlandish culture of “maula”, gleefully and mindlessly practised and encouraged by a thieving rentier class of dealers masquerading as leaders in the public, private and faith sectors of the socio-economy. Add to this as well, the inexplicable veneration and promotion by some, of a culture of begging involving hundreds of thousands of minors seen in just about every capital city and major town in Northern Nigeria and, indeed, in many, outside of it. These are children birthed by parents who have deliberately abdicated their responsibility. It should be a badge of shame and dishonour that parents would wilfully opt to “export” innocent kids away from home with hardly any compass to navigate their way through a rough, brutish and harsh terrain, thereby rendering them as canon-fodder for all manner bad faith characters.
In addition to these festering maladies within the culture is the general onset of apathy towards (and the deliberate, criminal divestments and wanton corruption which have weakened public) state-driven skills, vocational and formal education. Amongst several factors, these have combined to disadvantage our rapidly expanding youth population of this massive region of Nigeria. The general collapse of education opportunities and standards all over Nigeria, with the north bearing the brunt the most, became the bitter icing on the cake. And this was a region that had by all indicators of progression in modernity, was and is widely acknowledged to be lagging far behind its counterparts in Nigeria, long before independence in 1960.
Today, this generation of youth, those born between 25 to 35 years ago have all grown. They have matured in a North seemingly flailing without direction. The reality and experiences of these youth have been but a witness to violent conflict and the rapacious pilfering by their so-called political, social and religious elites of public resources. They have watched with envy – thanks to the ubiquity of social media – the abhorrent lifestyles of many of such officeholders in the region and elsewhere, as exemplified by the opulent economic and social aggrandisement by political and religious leaders, serially on display in their villages, towns and cities.
They have seen and felt the apparent incapacity fueled by corruption, how a section of men and officers in state law enforcement and security have woefully come up short and/or have abused, misused and compromised their roles and became stupendously rich in the process. In stark, unmistakable terms, youth in the North of Nigeria are today living in the truest nightmare, direct witnesses and many of them victims of a of a state apparatus manifestly unable to combat and end banditry as well as curtail and punish kidnapping as a criminal enterprise. Our “matasa” have encountered first-hand through nearly two and half decades now, a rampaging insurgency that has wreaked maximum havoc on the very foundations and socioeconomic fabric of the North. Clearly then, we should not be surprised that young people in Northern Nigeria seem unable to realistically visualise and locate for themselves a visible trajectory of a thriving future of socioeconomic opportunities. And going off the rails in this sensw can be easily traced back from especially 1999 to date.
But away from the lamentation, I make bold to say that some of the many answers and solutions to this dangerous state of affairs are right before us. I will mention a few:
Agriculture in the North is and remains our “lowest hanging fruits”, yet we have outrageously failed to harness its full potential in tune with contemporary practices! Public, private and civil society actors must quickly work together to redirect and deploy the vibrant energy of our youth population to full, modernized and sustained participation in this sector. The sad reality is that within a space of just eight years, a sitting president of northern extraction wittingly (some would say, absent-mindedly) and inexplicably superintended the unfortunate “democratisation” of insecurity all over the region. Under his watch, rampaging insurgents and kidnapping gangs forced commercial and subsistence farming to the backstage, leading to acute food scarcity. Farms and farming communities had to contend with sustained attacks on their communities, thus rendering massive space of arable farmlands to lie waste year in and year out. The options before us are as clear as daylight. We must quickly put heads together, figure out a way to confront these man-made challenges, sensitise and partner with state agencies, and commence the difficult but necessary act of mobilising our young population to return in their numbers, to our first love, which is agriculture.
Our villages, towns and cities are increasingly becoming an environmental nightmare with dirt, filth and unhygienic practices cohabiting with the populace as if it is normal way of life. The perennial outbreaks of diseases like cholera in many of our communities reflect the abysmal health and living conditions of majority of our compatriots in Arewa. Our teeming youth population should be mobilised, trained and offered incentives in their various locations, to take up massive clean-ups of our neighbourhoods on a weekly basis. We must move to reimagine and put forth concrete and viable action steps in this regard, consciously engaging with state, non-state and educational/research institutions, so as to design pathways that will ultimately convert the state of our despondent residential and commercial environments into the sustainable goldmine that they most certainly are. We have the demographic advantage over other parts of the country, that can be harnessed as the vanguard for this badly needed turnaround.
Finally (I have several other ideas but let me end it here for now with this point): our northern governors must immediately borrow in part or wholesale, the youth developmental blueprint of Prof. Babagana Umara Zulum, the Governor of Borno State. In a short four years of his first term in office, and building on the foundations of his predecessor, he instigated a huge experiment in skills and vocational training for thousands of youths annually. Majority of these youth had on account of the Boko Haram insurgency, lost their chances of acquiring formal education. But in a few years from now, Borno youth will be blazing the trail in Northern Nigeria with their globally acclaimed entrepreneurial skills sets. I was part of a delegation visiting Maiduguri for a couple of days in late 2022. Based on my first-hand encounters of these and other accomplishments by the Zulum administration in health, education, agriculture, trade and commerce, the time is now for every governor in the north to emulate this example and commit to provide skills for not less than 10,000 young people annually in various trades, crafts and entrepreneurship starter packs. The resources are there; it is doable.
We are, without a doubt or any form of pretense, far behind as a region. Let us step up to do something about it. I wish to charge socio-political and cultural platforms in the north, to convene a forum of like-minded Arewa persons to address this quagmire that has held the region down for far too long. The time is now to step together and chart a new course for the Giant of Nigeria, sadly wobbling along presently with clay feet. History beckons, “yan’uwa”.
Audu, a marketing communications consultant, public policy strategist, resource optimization specialist and legal practitioner, writes from Jos.
