Nigeria is at a crossroads over the festering insecurity ravaging mostly the northern part of the country. The arch-terrorists operating on the banner of Boko Haram and their grisly pattern of unleashing death and destruction in the north east, proves the gruesome clout of the sect as the predominant champions of mayhem.
But the situation gets even worse with the equally deadly cross-border bandits operating in the North West and the marauding killer- herdsmen that have troubled the north central. The three groups probably with variant objectives are synonymous in their proposition of violence to drive their causes. Nearly 30,000 have been killed in the last 10 years by these groups, and about 2.8 million people displaced and economic activities have been crippled with little prospects of revival.
The deteriorating economic conditions in the region, the vanishing business opportunities and the rising poverty in the region, remain unquantifiable even as prominent leaders in the region fear the worse.
Nigeria according World Poverty Clock, is the poverty capital of the world, meaning that of the estimated 200 million population of Nigeria, over 100 million people are living below the poverty line. Recall that the World Bank in December, warned that the situation could worsen as a quarter of the world’s poor would reside in Nigeria by 2030 if the country does not embark on immediate reforms.
According to the recent report of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria’s GDP growth rate is said to be at 2.3percent per annum, which is largely not inclusive, while the population growth is 3.4percent. So population growth surpasses economic growth, making the situation indeed very grim for the country. NBS figures also said that the unemployment figure hit 23.1percent while inflation has jumped to 12.13percent in January from 11.98percent recorded in December.
It becomes even more pathetic for the northern region when the World Bank estimated that 87percent of all the poor people in Nigeria are in the north.
A report titled, ‘Advancing social protection in a dynamic Nigeria’, said “Poverty in the northern regions of the country has been increasing especially in the north-west zone. Almost half of all poor lived in the north-west and the north accounts for 87 percent of all poor in the country in 2016.”
Comparing Nigeria to the rest of the West African region, the World Bank said poverty reduction has been less-responsive to economic growth.
“Despite being a middle-income economy, Nigeria fares astonishingly poorly in poverty and human capital-related outcomes.
“The number of people living in extreme poverty has gone up from 2011 to 2016, and many more are vulnerable to falling into poverty, especially in the northern regions of the country.”
These figures, of course, elicited reactions from the Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi II, who warned that the north is headed for destruction if nothing changes about the various vices ravaging the region and the concomitant poverty.
The paramount Kano monarch expressed his worries at the 60th birthday of Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai. He said if the north failed to change by tackling some of the challenges – poverty, insecurity, education, among others; it was then headed for destruction.
“Nobody who is a leader in northern Nigeria today can afford to be happy. You cannot be happy with about 87 percent of poverty in Nigeria is in the north,” he added.
He said the northerners need to start doing things differently to experience the desired change. “You can’t be happy with the drug problem, you can’t be happy with the Boko Haram problem. You can’t be happy with political thuggery. You can’t be happy with all the issues; the Almajiri problem that we have,” Emir Sanusi said.
Also speaking to BDSUNDAY on the scourge of insecurity in the north and the deepening economic crisis that has engulfed the region, public affairs analyst and columnist, Majeed Dahiru, said the consequences are enormous. He added that apart from the threat posed to the lives of the people, no serious investor, either foreign or domestic, will risk going to the northern region to invest.
Unquantifiable amount of business losses has been recorded in the region as even agriculture that is the main stay of the region’s activities has been hampered as most farmers have fled their farms.
Dahiru noted that farmers are unable to repay their loan through the Anchor Borrowers Programme of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) because according to them, bandits and terrorists have not allowed them a piece of mind to work on their farms to such an extent to make enough profits to repay back the loans.
“We are talking about a loss arising from insurgency of over 70 billion naira in just one sector alone. That is the situation of the northern Nigerians for now,” he said.
He said further that, “Economic activities cannot thrive in an atmosphere of insecurity and violence on such a proportion that can be described as an outright war. So we are talking about existence in the first place, the lives of the people in the north are actually threatened out of existence and so the economy cannot witness any form of prosperity.
“This is more so because this same region has a problem of acute shortage of human resource arising from educational backwardness. When such a region is plagued by warfare or insurgency, economy suffers immeasurably. And so the talk of foreign investment or any form of foreign investment in northern Nigeria cannot even be contemplated now.
Dahiru said Nigerian especially the Muslim community must begin the process of changing the mindset of their population and extricate them from what he called “a uniquely northern Nigerian Muslim culture” that holds western education in contempt which preaches the need for a jihadist revivalism in the contemporary world.
“So we need a renewed Nigeria to solve the problem that we are having today, we need a reintegrated Nigeria, a more United Nigerians where all hands must be on deck to confront our common enemies and that must begin from within the Muslim society and the northern region in particular,” he noted.
Contributing, the Executive Director of The Integrity Friends for Truth and Peace Initiative, a civil society organisation, Livingstone Wechie, lamented the almost endless or continuous escalation of insurgency. He stressed that it has almost crippled the economic environment and prospects of the predominantly affected areas.
“The first message that ordinarily goes to an investor both local and foreign while doing feasibility analysis is the role of insurgency vis-a-vis their prospective investment. It is on record that no state where insurgency is ravaging has made significant economic progress so far, rather they are almost a charitable burden to the compassion of their neighbours. This is naturally so because everybody has to be supportive on humanitarian grounds,” he said.
It however, appears a Herculean task to tame the monsters ravaging the region as the northern political leadership and the religious establishments appear not ready to change. They always capitalise on the poverty and ignorance of the people to mobilise them only to use their population to hijack political power for the benefit of the elite while the larger population remains deplorably poor. So, the nation has a long way to go and there appears no end in sight as the northern burden continues.
Innocent Odoh, Abuja
