Muslim-Muslim Ticket: Bola Ahmed Tinubu (left), the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate for 2023, is shown with Kashim Shettima, his running mate and a noted Boko Haram booster and former governor of Borno State.CONTINUE FULL READING>>>>>
It is extremely perplexing that some northern elites have recently launched a flurry of attacks and harsh remarks against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. One would think that after ruling Nigeria and controlling her economy and other vital areas for the majority of her existence, these northern elites would have learned to look inward and ask themselves some important, introspective questions to determine where the rain began to beat them. This way, they could figure out how to turn around and do what is best for their area and the country as a whole.
It is not only hypocritical but also self-destructive for the same region that recently produced General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), the most cryonic, nepotic, clannish, and ignorant president in Nigerian history, to be attacking Tinubu, who is clearly working to address the imbalances that have long held the country back.
Even though the rest of the country has given them countless advantages, the north should examine itself and ask why they are the most uneducated, impoverished, sick, and unsafe area in the nation. After decades of having access to the nation’s abundant resources, what have they done with them? Why must the rest of the nation still go out of its way to accommodate them in order to allow northern children to try attending school? While a child from the north is admitted on a platter of gold even though they only received two marks, a youngster from the south must work hard to earn roughly 150 marks in order to be admitted into federal government colleges!
In order to accommodate the north’s seemingly unending backwardness, the country has long sacrificed merit in all facets of life by instituting quota systems in federal academic institutions and the federal civil service. This may sound harsh, but sometimes the reality isn’t so nice.
It is puzzling that even at the highest levels of the federal civil service, the greatest number of employees appear to be in the area with the highest prevalence of illiteracy in the entire nation. Over the years, numerous outstanding applicants from the south who performed really well on the JAMB and WAEC/NECO exams have been turned away from federal postsecondary institutions in favor of those from the north who received incredibly high marks.
However, several of the region’s governors prioritize spending billions of naira on lavish weddings for a populace that is economically and socially disadvantaged each year in order to increase their political base. Northern aristocracy find it extremely disheartening that their governors engage in such extravagant endeavors. And instead of calling their governors to order, they are concentrating on Tinubu, who has only been in office for a little more than a year.
When Buhari brought the country to its knees and left neither the north nor the south with anything to show for it, where were these same northerners? Our fiscal expenditures were trillions upon trillions, but they had no discernible effect on the populace. In the two years leading up to 2027, these northern elites’ excessive desire for power abruptly takes precedence over all other priorities. Given that they annually spend billions of naira on mass weddings, it is not surprising that they use the populace as a political weapon.
They are shameless elites who abandon their untrained children to wander the streets of Abuja, Lagos, and other cities pleading for handouts. Children in the north are chasing after people for charity while children in the south are hurrying to school while clutching books. However, the plate-clutching kids from the north would be allowed to enroll in federal government colleges whereas these same kids from the south would be turned away!
Northern youngsters, who are dehumanized by their elders and forced to live like herds without shepherds, are being degraded in this egregious way. The northern elites know that their power to use their people against others would have been severely undermined the minute they invested in vital areas like infrastructure, healthcare, education, and agriculture. Therefore, it begs the question of why they were so upset about Tinubu’s tax reform measures when they could have used the vast resources from the Nigerian public coffers for their people.
An ignorant spectator might assume that the clamor was about the people because of all the chaos caused by the bills, but in reality, it was about their fear of losing resources for everyday necessities while maintaining their people’s persistent poverty, illiteracy, illness, and instability. A true reform program to guarantee equity, efficiency, and a merit-based society will always appear to be an agenda against the north given the numerous polity imbalances that favor the north. The north was the first to complain when Olayemi Cardoso, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, started reforming the institution by moving certain essential functions to Lagos.
The north rebelled against similar reforms in the aviation industry when they were introduced by Festus Keyamo, the minister of aviation and aerospace development. Even though President Tinubu has granted them many privileges, they continue to be the ones who trash him in the media, whine, and act out like whiny kids who have been denied their toys. Less than a year into his presidency, in April 2024, several northern elders began agitating the political landscape by declaring they would not support Tinubu in the 2027 election.
Since then, they have continued to sing the same tune, and lately, it has even gotten louder. This is true even if a sizable portion of the northern population holds federal ministry positions and even controls both ministerial and non-ministerial appointments in our defense industry. In homage to the north, this same president established a ministry of cattle development. Although regional development commissions were established for all other regions as well, this is on top of them. Federal rail projects are available in the north that are not in other areas.
Despite the lack of gas reserves in the north, they, like the southwest, profit from gas pipelines passing through them. There are no gas pipelines that run across the southeast, despite its vast gas deposits. Most of Nigeria’s top military units and training facilities are located in the country’s north. Many of these imbalances. However, whenever other regions possess political power, the north is the one that always complains the loudest.
One wonders why the north seems to always want to maintain power at all costs and at the expense of other regions, even when they benefit from better deals under presidents from other regions than their own, given how the north has squandered the vast opportunities that the rest of Nigeria has accrued to it over the years. This begs the question, what is the true desire of the north?CONTINUE FULL READING>>>>>
