Nothern Bureau Chief, Hassan Ibrahim, takes a critical look at the just concluded Northern Economic Summit organised by a group of the Northern elite, the G20, concluding that unless a proactive step is taken to ensure that some of the measures proffered during the 2-day event are vigorously pursued and implemented, the North might remain stagnant.WITH its population and size, the North is definitely a huge market. Going by the economic phrase that a market is the central reality of an economic system, the Northern region should have been a major player in world trade, thereby enhancing the status of Nigeria in global politics and its bargaining power in issues not only about Africa but the world in general, since with the demise of the cold war politics, economic power is gradually pushing military might to the background. Economically, China today is moving astronomically and even the USA, some have said, is pleading with the Chinese to slow down.Post-independence Northern Nigeria was a period of economic boom; the region, with abundant human and agricultural resources, produced in abundance, what was then the mainstay of the Nigerian economy. In fact, many had observed that the North was a major supplier of cash and food crops and other raw materials to many industries in the Western world and Asia. Without these raw materials, many of these industries would have crumbled, thus affecting the socio-economic wellbeing of many countries in Europe and the Americas.The Northern region, with its population and strength, was also a huge market for the finished products from these foreign industries, thereby creating a cycle of an unequal trade and exchange in which the North was shortchanged for a very long time until a seeming economic succour came through the indigenisation policy of the Murtala regime in 1976.The preceding years were, sadly, an era of Northern decline in spite of the fact that most of the Nigerian presidents or Heads of State were of northern extraction, a fact which Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole, reiterated while speaking during the Economic Summit in Kaduna.According to Dimeji Bankole, who took offence when the gathering applaude him, the North controls about 53 per cent of the human resources in Nigeria, but what has it done to turn it into a productive force The North has ruled for most of the time, but what has it done to better its people Today, out of the 360 members of the House of Representatives, 200 are from the North. They are going to largely decide how the over N5 trillion 2011 National Budget would be spent. How would this number take advantage of this for the good of the NorthBankoles remarks, though blunt and precise, could not be far from the truth, as a visit to the core North would reveal how its people are being subjected to extreme forms of poverty. Agriculture, which was the major occupation of the northerners, has been hijacked either by the retired military class and their associates, or by politicians who made so much money over time. Policies revolving around the procurement, distribution and application of fertilizer on farms within the region, have been so manipulated that even subsistence farming is becoming increasingly unattractive and expensive. The peasants in the North are now subservient to the few rich in the region who offer them peanuts just to enable them to see the next day. They are also constantly subjected to the antics of the Northern oligarchy garbed within the Northern emirate system that relied heavily from royalties derived from the numerous local government councils in the North.Just like his predecessor, Professor Charles Soludo, who once said that poverty was essentially a Northern phenomenon, the Central Bank governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, said in his paper during the Economic Summit, that the North held the extreme forms of the problem that confronted Nigeria as a nation. He said some parts of Jigawa and Yobe had poverty levels worse than in Niger and Chad and that the elite of the region were to be blamed.According to Sanusi, a descendant of the Kano royal household, we are talking about redressing conditions of objective violence that have continued to bring about this subjective violence that we have continued to witness in Jos because we created an unequal society characterised by poverty, unemployment, lack of education and hopelessness of the people that make them take up arms against their neighbours and against the society.Sanusi was apt when he said so often, northern leaders talked about the North when it was time for elections and when they were sharing political appointments, they talked about the region.Keen observers are quick to recall that the venue of the summit, the Kaduna Trade Fair complex, was a beehive of activities during the annual trade fair organised by the Kaduna Chamber of Commerce, particularly during the military era. But subsequently, attendance by state governors continued to witness a decline. The trade fair complex, which is of international standard, remained underutilised for reasons no one could exactly tell. Many have stopped being enthusiastic about the yearly event, complaining that they are tired of selling only biscuits and other flour products.According to Sanusi, when it comes to the issue of what affects the northerner on the street, we do not talk about it. Take simple statistics. If oil price goes up or down, if stock market goes up or down or banks collapse, everybody knows.How many people have the statistics of the number of industries in Kaduna for example, that have been shut down in the last 20 years as a result of the failure of government to provide power and infrastructureHow many people have the statistics of gainfully employed human beings who were working in those factories who lost their jobs And the number of wives, or the children they had who had to drop out of school, or were not able to get medical care because of failure of government to provide power which led to the closure of the industries and the loss of jobs.When, 20 years later, those children pick up arms in the name of religion or ethnicity or whatever against society, we are surprised because we do not know that those children are the products of the system that fails to cater for them. The problem of the North is an extreme form of the problem that faces the entire country and while we talk about the North, I think it is important to understand that a poor man in Nigeria, whether it is in the north of the Niger or the south, is a victim of the same system and at the end of the day, those of us in the elite class, those of us in policy making, whether you are from Kano or Kaduna or Bayelsa or Anambra, we are all together culpable and guilty and responsible for this problem.Sanusi explained that with our abundant human and natural resources, we have no genuine reason to continue importing rice apart from the fact that some people are making money importing rice as was exemplified when a billion dollar was spent last year to import the staple food.In 2005, poverty incidence in the North was placed at 64.8 per cent, the national average was 54. 7 per cent, and in the South, it was 42.8 per cent. Even 42.8 per cent for southern Nigeria is bad for a country that is rich in resources. This was in 2005, and things have gone progressively worse. If you look at human development indices of the United Nations, they are even misleading. If you take some states in North-Eastern and North-Western Nigeria, if those states were countries of their own, they would be poorer than Chad or Niger.This is papered over by the national average; if you take Bornu and add Bayelsa or if you take Borno and add Lagos, it lifts up the average. Some of the states in the North are poorer than Niger, poorer than Chad, poorer than Cameroon. I have always said that if you have the right economic policies for the nation, every part of the nation benefits. Agriculture is 42 per cent of Nigerias GDP and the bulk of the arable land in Nigeria and the bulk of agricultural products come from the north.So, why is there a higher incidence of poverty in the North, which accounts for 42 per cent of the GDP It does not need a genius to probably know that we do not have the right agricultural policies. It is a problem that is consistent in our economic programmes. We have a country that has the 6th largest gas reserves in the world and we do not produce our power.Nigeria, with its size and super power potentials within the sub region, generates 3000 megawatts of power. Togo, which is smaller than many states in Nigeria, generates 3000 for its use now and for export. Ethiopia, which was at war not too long ago, will, by 2012, be generating 4,000 megawatts.It is sad that in the early 1960s, Arabs in Dubai were riding camels, but today, Nigerians are awed anytime they visit the country because it has been transformed into a modern city envied by the West. An analyst said many Chinese people saw the Mainland Bridge for the first time in their life while on a visit to Lagos, Nigeria. China today is a success story, while Nigeria is economically dependent on Chinese products and expertise. Saudi Airlines and Nigerian Airways were said to have taken off at the same time. Today, Saudi Airlines has many planes that makes the King AbdulAzeez Airport in Jeddah extremely busy and economically viable, but the Nigeria Airways has since become history.Sanusi added: We are an OPEC member, we export crude oil and we import refined petroleum products. We are the worlds number one producer of cassava, but we import refined starch. We have a large cotton belt stretching from Funtua, Gusau, all the way to Biu in the North-East, and we import textile fabric from China. We have hides and skin and we do not have a leather goods industry.Another resource person at the Economic Summit, Engr. Mansur Ahmed, summed it up that Nigeria was now a dumping ground for cheap and substandard electric generators from China. He said in an age where many countries were exploring avenues in the moon, Nigeria, the North in particular, appeared to be perfecting how to use the hoe on the farm.It is true that the vice-president is very passionate about PAN and the automobile industry but, Sanusi has said, we can never improve on local content in the automobile industry if we do not produce flat sheets, otherwise the only local content will be paint and water. Without flat sheets, you cannot produce anything. Our problems started from the abandonment of national economic plans and lack of articulate vision on how to build an economy and when we succumb to something called market forces.Malaysia, we are told, got palm kennels from Nigeria and today, the country exports palm oil to many countries of the world, including Nigeria where palm kernels abound. The dwindling nature of education in Nigeria has now made those who could afford it to send their children and wards to Malaysia, Ghana and other serious countries for qualitative and uninterrupted higher education, to the detriment of our foreign exchange. The few quality private universities in the country are deliberately and systematically designed in such a way that only the super rich could patroniztheme.Sanusi, other resources persons and even ordinary folk at the summit expressed the belief that the most difficult battle which Nigerians have to fight is the battle of getting the right leadership in Nigeria.However, a mild drama ensued at the summit when Vice President Namadi Sambo, Governor Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa of Kaduna State and others assured that things would change for the better in the North and Nigeria in general, but that Nigeria needed Goodluck. Speaker of the House of Reps, Mr. Dimeji Bankole, said the underdevelopment of the North had nothing to do with Goodluck, adding that you are responsible for the backwardness in this region. The only resource that is increasing in this country is our population and if we dont use it well, the problem is yours. This thing has nothing do with Goodluck. But Sambo insisted that Nigeria as a country needed Goodluck.Nigerians, many have reasoned, believe in luck but do not fully rely on it. All that is needed to make the region and country much better is an upright leadership and the zeal to work dispassionately so that there would be structural changes in all sectors of the economy.President Godluck Jonathan, in his speech at the summit, gave the promise of a good future for the nation. Although he said he knew not much about Northern Nigeria, its people, history and environment until later in life when he joined politics, he confessed that the leaders in the region, the Emirs in particular, were very rich people.But the President had failed to ponder on the contradiction. Why rich leaders, emirs and very poor people Why the teeming unemployed, the army of child urchins in virtually all the major streets in towns, villages and hamlets across the North Although social inequality is a universal feature of all human societies, the situation up North seems to have defied all forms of logic and decorum. But time is the best healer and with the increasing rate of awareness in the northern states, one would not be at fault to say that we at the threshold of a new beginning.According to the president,I have visited many Empire palaces, and I have been awe-struck by the quality and craftsmanship of their designs. It did not come cheap to build such structures. Some, I have been told, have been there since the 18th century. And when you look at the attires of the Emirs, and that of their officials, you know that they come from very expensive fabrics. The history of the North was once that of riches and colour.But I am disturbed from the Central Bank statistics on the North, placing it the lowest in the country.Something must have grossly gone wrong. And the solution has to be found, because the North still has some of the brightest minds in Nigeria and it also has many resources.He said his administration was putting measures in place to provide basic infrastructure all over Nigeria. The Federal Government specifically was planning to spend N350 billion in building small dams across the North in the next four years with the view of stimulating massive irrigation farms.Although politicians are perceived globally to be the same, Nigerians and Northerners in particular are hopeful that the incentives for recovery which the president and vice-president enumerated at the summit will be translated into realty. Unless these and other recommendations during the summit are translated into reality, the gathering which comprised an array of distinguished Nigerians, Northerners in particular, would not be any different from those organized in the past. A mere tea party or an old wine in a new bottle.
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