Against many held views that the burden of the North is its huge population, with respects, I beg to differ with this general narrative – it’s not overpopulation that is the burden of Northern Nigeria; it’s its poor leadership that is the burden! No more, no less!! Since the demise of the 1st Republic, and especially since the ushering of the current democratic dispensation, Northern Nigeria has not had the good fortune of having the right leadership at all levels. What we have been having as elected leaders are politicians whose ideas leadership are only self-centred and self-serving.
Otherwise, with the right leadership, the large population of Northern Nigeria would have been our huge asset. If only we had generated the right and appropriate leaderships that leveraged on our population and created the key indices for development – i.e. turning our large populace into “enterprising self-entrepreneurs”, so to speak.
In these twenty-five years of elected leaderships, if only the ‘elected leaders’ had massively educated our children and youths into pools of skilled administrators, educationists, teachers, researchers, agriculturalists, economists, scientists, engineers, architects, accountants, doctors, ITCs, innovators, lawyers, pilots, traders, etc., generally making the mass of our population acquire knowledge, technology, skills, innovation, etc.; then get us turn again to our huge population for the needed massive labour and workforce in production, agriculture, infrastructure, factories, sports, athletics, etc. further turning our mass populations into large markets of producers, consumers and service providers – our elected leaders would have long created the necessary socioeconomic environment in the region to pull our mass populations out of poverty. We would have then stimulated further economic activities and creativities in the skills and talents that would abound in our large populace.
And with its additional advantages of good climate, huge deposits of natural resources, Northern Nigeria would have rapidly pulled the mass of its populace out of poverty in the shortest possible time.
If these had happened the entire story of the North and indeed the country would have been different! Our huge population would not have been wrongly assumed as the burden, both on us and on the nation. We’ve seen across the world where huge population is not a burden and where low population live in penury and misery!
But unfortunately, the crop of Northern leaders failed to make this happen. The actual burden, therefore, in the case of Northern Nigeria, is the burden of poor leadership heaped on a huge population!
One of the key missions of LND should be to help generate such needed leadership to create such socioeconomic environment to attain the desired goal.
Umar Ardo, Ph.D