Northern Nigeria’s Prosperity: Imperative of Social, Economic Transformation
Kingsley Moghalu
Nigeria as a whole faces many fundamental challenges, and different parts of the country also face different problems largely peculiar to those regions. So our discussion today should by no means be interpreted as suggesting that other parts of Nigeria are necessarily in great shape, but you have asked me to address Northern Nigeria specifically. It’s a great honour that you have done me considering that, despite my not hailing from this part of our country, and despite all the talent available in Northern Nigerian society, you have asked me of all people to address the challenges confronting Northern Nigeria and suggest possible solutions. As a committed Nigerian I have always believed that we all, citizens of our country, are intrinsically interdependent. What happens in the North, therefore, doesn’t stay in the North but affects us all. We are all stakeholders in Northern Nigeria’s progress. I speak, therefore, as a concerned citizen of the Nigerian commonwealth, and in a spirit of brotherhood.
To that end, I have framed the title of this lecture very carefully, and that title has two parts. The first is: “Northern Nigeria’s Prosperity in the 21st Century”. This means that my focus is on how the northern regions of our country can create and grow wealth, achieving human development as a core foundation. By human development, of course, we mean life expectancy, education and knowledge, and per capita income. You will also note a reference to the 21st century. This refers to modernity, the implications of globalization in the march of human progress as opposed to insularity, the quantum leaps in science and technology in this century, and the imperative that Northern Nigeria – and indeed all of Nigeria – must not be left behind.
The second part of the title is: “The Imperative of Social and Economic Transformation” Here I am saying that given the reality on the ground today, if Northern Nigeria is to achieve prosperity, a fundamental shift in how Nigerian citizens in the North perceive, create and respond to the world around us (the worldview) is not an option. It is an imperative. Taken together then, I am saying that Northern Nigeria must now frame a strategic choice. That choice must be that of prosperity for our people of Northern extraction as opposed to poverty – and that, to achieve prosperity, certain aspects of northern society and economic organization must necessarily change.
In doing so, I hope we all can agree on the following premises for our discussion today:
(a) Northern Nigeria matters, but not just because of the reasons many Northern Nigerians think it matters. The region matters beyond arguments about land mass and controversial population statistics, but mainly because it is a foundational partner in the establishment of Nigeria as one country through the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates in 1914;
(b) There is a big problem in the north today, and that problem also affects the overall pace of economic, social and political progress of Nigeria as a whole;
(c) We need to agree on what exactly that problem is, because we can’t overcome an obstacle if we don’t understand clearly what that obstacle is, or if we know what it is but pretend not to know, or if we mischaracterize the problem and thus confuse ourselves and the whole picture;
(d) We want to solve the problem or overcome the obstacle and make progress;
(e) We can reach agreement on the solution; and
(f) We take resolute action based on all the foregoing.
NORTHERN NIGERIA: THE ISSUES Underdevelopment and Poverty
Northern Nigeria is afflicted by the central challenge of underdevelopment, not just poverty. Yes, poverty is a core aspect of this problem, but the word “underdevelopment” is more accurate because it includes other dimensions such as political and social organization and outlook, and how these factors create and sustain poverty in the region.
Nigeria as a whole is now infamously the poverty capital of the world, with 92 million of its 200 million people living in extreme poverty and overtaking India (which has a population of 1.3 billion) in this dubious distinction. Northern Nigeria, however, is the poverty capital of Nigeria, which makes the region the poverty capital of the world’s poverty capital. Comparative regional poverty rates in Nigeria are: North-West: 80.9%, North-East: 76.8%, North-Central: 45.7%, giving a northern poverty average of 67.8%. Compare this with the southern regions: South-West: 19.3%, South-South: 25.2%, South-East: 27.4%, with a southern average of 24%. Northern Nigeria is nearly three times poorer than Southern Nigeria.
The State of Education:
Northern Nigeria lags far behind Southern Nigeria in western educational development. The seeds of this imbalance were sown during the colonial period. There is a view that the emirs who up to the establishment of the northern regional house of assembly were in the vanguard of the northern political leadership, lacked any real interest in the development of western education, presumably out of fear that a new educated class might challenge their political and religious authority. In the effort to ensure a catch-up between the north and the south in educated manpower, the post-independence northern political elite (including the successive military regimes that were dominated by military officers from the north) markedly lowered the standards for access to tertiary education for candidates from northern states. This politically motivated approach to education policy – which is quite different from a well thought-out and justifiable affirmative action program that was possible—renders many young people from Northern Nigeria uncompetitive in the wider world of work, and has robbed the region of the skilled human capital so essential for its development.
There is a dearth of qualified teachers at all levels of education in Nigeria as a whole, but the problem is most acute in Northern Nigeria. With the exception of first and second generation universities such as Ahmadu Bello University and the University of Maiduguri, a majority of teaching staff at tertiary institutions in the region do not possess doctorate degrees. In addition, Northern Nigeria is swamped by millions of out-of-school children roaming the streets, products of the almajiri system of religious education. The system must be fundamentally reformed and integrated into the modern educational system.
Currently, the literacy level in the north is 34% compared to 67% in the south. States in the North-East and the North-West have female primary school attendance rates of 47.7% and 47.3% respectively, with the implication that more than half of the girls of primary school age are out of school. The education deficit in Northern Nigeria is driven by factors such as economic barriers and socio-cultural norms and practices that discourage attendance in formal education, especially for girls.
Political Economy
In post-colonial Northern Nigeria, Sir Ahmadu Bello and other great leaders of the region worked selflessly to promote the region’s economy, incentivized by a spirit of competitive federalism with other regions. They prioritized sectors such as agriculture, trade, industry and general infrastructure. Sir Ahmadu Bello initiated industrialization in the north in the areas of textile mills, groundnut oil mills, and spearheaded the construction many feeder roads and intercity connections within Northern Nigeria. Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Northern Nigeria Development Corporation, Bank of the North, and Kainji Hydroelectric Dam were among the fruits of these efforts.
The story has changed dramatically today, and the north lacks sustainable economic models to take itself out of poverty. The entire 19 states in the three northern geopolitical zones account for only 23% of Nigeria’s GDP. Kano State, which predictably leads other northern states, produces only 3.3% of national GDP. Taraba State leads the rear with 0.25%. In contrast, three states in Southern Nigeria (Delta, Rivers and Lagos) produce 36% of Nigeria’s GDP.
The economic crisis in Northern Nigeria has its roots in the promotion of rent-seeking that progressively focused exclusively on spending and sharing oil “wealth”, factor-endowment thinking in the Nigerian (including Northern) political elite which believes –erroneously – that real national wealth can be built on the proceeds of crude natural resource exports. Superimposed on these factors is Nigeria’s constitutional conundrum of a supposed federation that is in reality a largely unitary government in which the central government retains vast constitutional powers of ownership of natural resources and revenues. Vast rural communities in Northern Nigeria are in a deplorable state because state governments have largely cornered the constitutional fiscal allocation to local government areas.
Prebendal Politics
Political leadership in Northern Nigeria today is marked – as in several other parts of Nigeria but with more harmful effects in the north – by selfishness and corruption. Northern Nigeria has produced heads of government for 42 years out of the 58 years of the country’s independence. But this fact has had no redemptive impact on the fortunes of the average citizen in Kano, Potiskum or Zamfara. There is a fallacy that if a Northerner holds national political power, the fortunes of the average person in the region will improve. Neither history nor contemporary facts support this nonetheless widespread notion. This truth applies not just to Northern Nigeria but to other parts of Nigeria as well. If access to political power automatically leads to economic success, Northern Nigeria would be the richest part of Nigeria.
The northern political elite influence the poor citizens in the region with an imperative of retaining political power at the national level, but these citizens do not understand that this is simply an elite game by and for the benefit of the elite, and that they should be more interested in performance-based leadership regardless of the ethnic or religious background of individual national leaders. Psychologically satisfied that “power is with the North”, poverty seems a small price to pay and they fail to hold their self-serving ethnic irredentists to account. The seeming preoccupation of the region’s elite with acquiring and retaining political power for the wrong reasons is, paradoxically, one of the most important drivers of underdevelopment of Northern Nigeria. It will take a powerful mindset shift to confront, accept and act on this truth.
Social Factors
Northern Nigeria is riddled today with severe social tensions that include high levels of youth unemployment, drug abuse, and the weak status of women in the society. While youth unemployment is a major problem across the country, it is especially acute in Northern Nigeria. Drug abuse indicates a rising tide of hopelessness that can only be reversed by a combination of measures addressing not just the problem of drug abuse in isolation, but also the underlying causes such as youth unemployment.
The status of women in Northern Nigeria remains relatively weak. I am not a Muslim, and so cannot claim to be an authority in Islamic law, but I am aware that several Islamic scholars have challenged the conventional wisdom of locating the low status of women in Northern Nigeria in religion. There are also several countries where their populations are far more dominantly Islamic than Nigeria, but women play far more muscular roles in political and economic leadership. Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan are examples. And there is clear evidence around the world that educating the girl child and women in general helps break inter-cycles of poverty.
-Prof. Moghalu, former Deputy Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria and Convener, To Build a Nation (TBAN), delivered the Ra’ayi Initiative for Human Development 2019 Lecture in Kano recently