Presumptuous!, By Wole Olaoye

In recent times, quite a number of ponderous statements have been credited to some self-styled ‘northern’ groups as regards the economy and governance. You would think the other zones of the country escorted them to the world. How presumptuous some people can get!

Of course, I understand the game. Every politician wants to be relevant. When a politician is looking for visibility, he goes forum-shopping. If he cannot fit into an existing forum, he creates his own.

Golden Noise

When I heard that the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) had raised an alarm on the siting of a gold refinery in Lagos State, I was more appalled than surprised. The forum called on Northern political leaders, governors and elites to rise against what it described as economic marginalisation of the region, its definition of marginalisation being that an enterprise established to add value to gold ought to be sited at the location of the mineral.

Hypocrisy! It did not matter to them that oil pipelines were laid from Port-Harcourt to Kaduna refinery despite the fact that the oil wells are in the Niger Delta region. The South-South people did not prevent the laying of the pipes, nor did they pull down the rafters when most of the juicy positions in the petroleum industry were filled with ‘Northerners’.

And, seriously, those claiming to speak for ‘Northerners’ know that they’re only speaking for their own micro-nationality within the geographical space called northern Nigeria. Can they claim to be speaking for the Middle-Belt? Do they ever speak for people outside their ethno-religious coven? It’s a game. Nobody is fooled.

What makes their outcry even more offensive is the fact that the newly established gold refinery being sited in Lagos is an initiative of Kian Smith, a fully privately owned mining company. It is not owned by the federal government as implied by NEF.

Was the federal government supposed to compel private companies to locate their operations in the North or any particular part of the country? Would any investor worth his nickel accept external dictation outside the recommendations of a professionally packaged feasibility study?

Until Nigeria confronts this entitlement mentality in which some members of the political elite are perpetually elbowing imaginary contenders in the struggle for what they think is their share of the national cake, the country will continue to flounder as it has done in the oil refinery business. Everybody’s property is nobody’s property. That’s why Nigeria has been paying billions of dollars in running idle government-owned refineries for over 10 years!

If the government establishes its own mineral refining factory, it will be run aground by perpetual regional appointees who specialise in knowing where the action is. Their definition of ‘inclusivity’ is strictly self-serving.

Marginalisation?

NEF spokesperson, Professor Abubakar Jiddere, marshalled his groups argument as follows: “For decades, Northern Nigeria has been reduced to a triple extraction zone: the supplier of raw minerals, the supplier of agricultural produce, and the supplier of cheap labour, while processing, branding, financing, and industrial infrastructure are consistently sited elsewhere. The persistent concentration of strategic economic assets in Lagos has fuelled spatial inequality, weakened trust in the federal system and heightened perceptions of economic marginalisation in the North.”

The question to ask Jiddere and his group is: Who built the industrial estates in Lagos State? Most of the industrial zones in the Southwest were built by the Action Group government of Obafemi Awolowo in the First Republic. The federal capital territory comprised Lagos Island, Ikoyi and parts of Victoria Island.

Idi-Oro and Mushin were in the Western Region. So were Ilupeju, Ikeja, Shomolu. The Western Region government had industrial estates dotted all over, and brought the scattered districts in the Lagos area under one administrative umbrella called Ikeja (an acronym from Ikorodu-Epe-Joint-Administration).

Those who don’t care to know the history of the area known as Lagos State today may be oblivious of the gains Lagos derived from Western Region. But who is complaining? There were similar industrial estates in other parts of the West. Northern Premier Ahmadu Bello also established industries in Kaduna and other places which successive leaders in the North have mismanaged.

To suggest that there is a systemic plan to keep the North down as a supplier of raw materials is to demonstrate crass ignorance. Also, there is no need for the warning issued by one of the myopic Zamfara gladiators— “Don’t touch our gold!” For your information, Ilesha, Ile-Ife and environs are also sitting on raw gold.

Recently, the same NEF reportedly compared bandits to Niger Delta militants who took up arms against oil companies for denuding their environment and destroying their fishing trade. How dare you compare èfó tètè and dágunro? Tete is the edible spinach; Dagunro is a poisonous plant.

Masses

Having travelled extensively in the North and enjoyed enduring friendships, I am quite sympathetic with the common people because of the harrowing deprivations many of them go through. There is poverty in all parts of Nigeria, but that of the North wears knickerbockers. The problem looks intractable only because it has been left to fester for too long.

If the governors, local government chairmen and other political elite put their heads together to enforce free education and compulsory skill acquisition, we can begin to tackle every other problem. When we leave children at the mercy of the elements in the name of Almajiranci, terrorism and other crimes will look attractive to them.

I have never seen any political leader fighting the local authorities on behalf of the Almajiris. It’s everybody for himself. Why isn’t any of the plethora of northern Forums and Associations fighting for the almajiri? Who’s going to swat flies for the cow that has no tail?

The key to prosperity in the North, and in all the other parts of Nigeria, is a dedicated programme to cater for the development of the younger generation. Nigeria has the largest population of young people in the world, with a median age of 18.1 years. About 51.7 per cent of the population are under 14 years old.

According to UNESCO, India, Nigeria and Pakistan have the highest figures for out-of-school children globally. Nigeria accounts for 20 million (i.e., 1 in 3 children are Out Of School in Nigeria), 10.2 million at the primary level and 8.1 million at the junior secondary school (JSS) level1. 12.4 million children never attended school and 5.9 million left school early. Nigeria’s OOS population accounts for 15 per cent of the global total. NEF itself admits that 80 per cent of OOS children are domiciled in Northern Nigeria.

There is an urgent need for all of us in the public space to campaign for good governance the sub-national level and the mobilisation of resources to lift OOS children out of the pit of ignorance and hopelessness. That is a noble battle to which well-meaning ‘busybodies’ like this writer can be co-opted. Perhaps, the political elite of Northern Nigeria will also spare a thought for the region’s children, side by side with angling for their habitual federal pies!

Chris Ngwu at 80

Hearty cheers to veteran journalist/broadcaster Chris Ngwu as he turned 80 over the weekend. Ad multos annos!

Wole Olaoye is a Public Relations consultant and veteran journalist. He can be reached on [email protected], Twitter: @wole_olaoye; Instagram: woleola2021