The region stood out for its rigorous agricultural and commercial activities during and after the colonial administration; and the famous Kano groundnut pyramids, for instance, were a testimony. Nigeria’s GDP then was high because of the North’s enormous contribution to the country’s economic development and the region became the pride of the nation; and it was on record that the federal government largely depended on the north for a large chunk of its revenue till when oil was eventually discovered.
However, research findings show the respect the north and its people had commanded many decades ago began to diminish when the good values for which the region was known were allowed to erode. The people today no longer work hard to earn a living as they prefer to get things effortlessly.
Most northern cities and towns are saturated because of the influx of people from rural areas who migrated to get white-color jobs. While those who cannot get the menial jobs to earn a living usually ended up in criminal activities, the lazy ones embrace begging as a last resort.
The story of the once vibrant region today is that of abject poverty, open begging, unemployment, bootlicking and praise-singing among its people. Unlike in the past when only the disabled begged for charity, the trend today is that even the able-bodied persons roam the streets for alms.
Population of beggars in cities and major towns of the north keeps on growing as no effort is being made by the authorities concerned to check the situation. They became a nuisance in the south and in far way Saudi Arabia and at a point they get themselves deported to Kano. It is the North’s protracted problem that defies solution and so it worries many patriotic northern leaders such as the late General Hassan Usman Katsina and Group Captain Usman Jibrin.
The Kano State government in the mid-1990s, for instance, attempted to tackle begging on the streets by evolving a social policy which was later copied by some northern states and eventually adopted by the Northern Governors’ Forum for implementation in all states in the North. The policy, as good as it was, only ended up in a paper as successive governments failed to implement it.
Closely related to begging is the issue of bootlicking and praise-singing as a way of earning a living in the north. This is common in a democratic set up and more pronounced in the North. And this has been comfortably accepted as the North’s common democratic feature because as it is one cannot survive unless he is either a bootlicker or praise-singer.
While some development experts blamed the situation on the failure of leaders from the area to develop agriculture side by side with oil, others fingered the lack of good social and economic policies to tackle the north’s myriad of problems as major cause for the social crisis. The easy money from the oil, they said, made everybody lazy at the expense of other equally important sectors.
The prospect in agriculture, according to Professor Ibrahim Ayagi, is not rosy at all. “The attraction is to go to the city and sell pure water or begging. We even have states that are paying stipends to almajirai. The almajirai will collect the stipend and still come to Kano to beg. It is not that easy. We are in a dilemma. Some will say since we have the land, put the people in it to farm. It is not that easy you need to attract them so that they will stay there. It is not a prison where you give somebody hoe and order him to go the farm”, he said.
Ayagi, a professor of Economics, also said the only way for government to make farm attractive is to make it in such a way that people will earn good money if they come to the farm, and no government can do that.
Ayagi said the only way out is for the north to get involved in gigantic investment in power, saying electricity will help revive the industry so that they can start production again. He said once the industry is working it will employ more people there by reducing unemployment, saying small projects won’t address the issue.
He said the best way out of the issue of poverty in the north is for the northern states to go back to something similar to the old northern region, saying the states should pool resources together and make a gigantic investment in power for example.
“They can also do that on water. In fact, states that are neighboring each other can pool resources together and invest big in power so that we can have the big push to surmount poverty. We need big pushers now because that is the only way we can effectively check poverty in a way that substantial number of our people can be lifted out of it. That other way is to get resources from somewhere and do these things,” he said.
Ayagi fingered population explosion as another factor responsible for poverty in the north. “With more population you needed more jobs and the job is not forthcoming. The oil which we depend on is not an employer of labor because it is not labor intensive. It is capital intensive and the capital you need you get it from abroad. Agriculture that employs people has gone from decline to total collapse; so the unemployment worsened,” he said.
Former National President of the Manufacturers’ Association of Nigeria (MAN) Alhaji Bashir Borodo recalled that 40 years ago the north was the richest region in the country. “Somehow with time, technology and new ways of doing things our people were not able to catch up. I don’t think it is something that was imposed on us. We are there and we see these things,” he said.
The former MAN boss blamed the situation on attitude and not poverty. “Take for example, how many salary jobs are here in Kano; probably a million. How many people are there in Kano? If you get the right answer, then you don’t talk about poverty. You talk about attitude; simple. You cannot be doing soft job in the 21st century. The world will not wait for you,” he said.
“I have the agony of going round industries in the north and who do I first see, the gateman, yes he is from the north; in fact, from the far north. When you enter a factory proper the only northerner you see is the admin manager who knows how to sort the problem of the expatriates and workers. But 80 per cent of the workforce is not from the north. From my experience, 8 out of 10 people I put in industry don’t last up to 2 years,” he said.
On how to tackle the situation, Borodo said government can do a lot by intervening, saying government should not just fold its arms and allow things to deteriorate. He said the governors have the muscle to open doors anywhere.
He said 11 years ago when Kano chamber of commerce heard that KLM was leaving Kano, their members said that should not be allowed to happen. “We went and booked an appointment with then governor; we told him that KLM has stayed long in Kano and benefitted. ‘They can’t just wake up and close their Kano office just because they have been given a slot in Abuja’. He agreed. He proceeded to Abuja to see them and pressed necessary buttons. He came back and told us that they will stay or they lose their Abuja slot. That is the way things are done,” he said.The North’s rich historical relics such as city walls, war arsenal and trade craft clearly speak volumes of the hard work and entrepreneurship of people of the region. Interestingly, even long before the advent of the colonial rule the people traversed many parts of the African countries and the Middle East essentially for trade mission and knowledge seeking.
The region stood out for its rigorous agricultural and commercial activities during and after the colonial administration; and the famous Kano groundnut pyramids, for instance, were a testimony. Nigeria’s GDP then was high because of the North’s enormous contribution to the country’s economic development and the region became the pride of the nation; and it was on record that the federal government largely depended on the north for a large chunk of its revenue till when oil was eventually discovered.
However, research findings show the respect the north and its people had commanded many decades ago began to diminish when the good values for which the region was known were allowed to erode. The people today no longer work hard to earn a living as they prefer to get things effortlessly.
Most northern cities and towns are saturated because of the influx of people from rural areas who migrated to get white-color jobs. While those who cannot get the menial jobs to earn a living usually ended up in criminal activities, the lazy ones embrace begging as a last resort.
The story of the once vibrant region today is that of abject poverty, open begging, unemployment, bootlicking and praise-singing among its people. Unlike in the past when only the disabled begged for charity, the trend today is that even the able-bodied persons roam the streets for alms.
Population of beggars in cities and major towns of the north keeps on growing as no effort is being made by the authorities concerned to check the situation. They became a nuisance in the south and in far way Saudi Arabia and at a point they get themselves deported to Kano. It is the North’s protracted problem that defies solution and so it worries many patriotic northern leaders such as the late General Hassan Usman Katsina and Group Captain Usman Jibrin.
The Kano State government in the mid-1990s, for instance, attempted to tackle begging on the streets by evolving a social policy which was later copied by some northern states and eventually adopted by the Northern Governors’ Forum for implementation in all states in the North. The policy, as good as it was, only ended up in a paper as successive governments failed to implement it.
Closely related to begging is the issue of bootlicking and praise-singing as a way of earning a living in the north. This is common in a democratic set up and more pronounced in the North. And this has been comfortably accepted as the North’s common democratic feature because as it is one cannot survive unless he is either a bootlicker or praise-singer.
While some development experts blamed the situation on the failure of leaders from the area to develop agriculture side by side with oil, others fingered the lack of good social and economic policies to tackle the north’s myriad of problems as major cause for the social crisis. The easy money from the oil, they said, made everybody lazy at the expense of other equally important sectors.
The prospect in agriculture, according to Professor Ibrahim Ayagi, is not rosy at all. “The attraction is to go to the city and sell pure water or begging. We even have states that are paying stipends to almajirai. The almajirai will collect the stipend and still come to Kano to beg. It is not that easy. We are in a dilemma. Some will say since we have the land, put the people in it to farm. It is not that easy you need to attract them so that they will stay there. It is not a prison where you give somebody hoe and order him to go the farm”, he said.
Ayagi, a professor of Economics, also said the only way for government to make farm attractive is to make it in such a way that people will earn good money if they come to the farm, and no government can do that.
Ayagi said the only way out is for the north to get involved in gigantic investment in power, saying electricity will help revive the industry so that they can start production again. He said once the industry is working it will employ more people there by reducing unemployment, saying small projects won’t address the issue.
He said the best way out of the issue of poverty in the north is for the northern states to go back to something similar to the old northern region, saying the states should pool resources together and make a gigantic investment in power for example.
“They can also do that on water. In fact, states that are neighboring each other can pool resources together and invest big in power so that we can have the big push to surmount poverty. We need big pushers now because that is the only way we can effectively check poverty in a way that substantial number of our people can be lifted out of it. That other way is to get resources from somewhere and do these things,” he said.
Ayagi fingered population explosion as another factor responsible for poverty in the north. “With more population you needed more jobs and the job is not forthcoming. The oil which we depend on is not an employer of labor because it is not labor intensive. It is capital intensive and the capital you need you get it from abroad. Agriculture that employs people has gone from decline to total collapse; so the unemployment worsened,” he said.
Former National President of the Manufacturers’ Association of Nigeria (MAN) Alhaji Bashir Borodo recalled that 40 years ago the north was the richest region in the country. “Somehow with time, technology and new ways of doing things our people were not able to catch up. I don’t think it is something that was imposed on us. We are there and we see these things,” he said.
The former MAN boss blamed the situation on attitude and not poverty. “Take for example, how many salary jobs are here in Kano; probably a million. How many people are there in Kano? If you get the right answer, then you don’t talk about poverty. You talk about attitude; simple. You cannot be doing soft job in the 21st century. The world will not wait for you,” he said.
“I have the agony of going round industries in the north and who do I first see, the gateman, yes he is from the north; in fact, from the far north. When you enter a factory proper the only northerner you see is the admin manager who knows how to sort the problem of the expatriates and workers. But 80 per cent of the workforce is not from the north. From my experience, 8 out of 10 people I put in industry don’t last up to 2 years,” he said.
On how to tackle the situation, Borodo said government can do a lot by intervening, saying government should not just fold its arms and allow things to deteriorate. He said the governors have the muscle to open doors anywhere.
He said 11 years ago when Kano chamber of commerce heard that KLM was leaving Kano, their members said that should not be allowed to happen. “We went and booked an appointment with then governor; we told him that KLM has stayed long in Kano and benefitted. ‘They can’t just wake up and close their Kano office just because they have been given a slot in Abuja’. He agreed. He proceeded to Abuja to see them and pressed necessary buttons. He came back and told us that they will stay or they lose their Abuja slot. That is the way things are done,” he said.
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