Former Speaker of the House of Representatives,Rt Hon Yakubu Dogara has described the Northern Nigeria as the largest killing field and the biggest cemetery in the country today.
He lamented that “Today, the North is faced with unprecedented crisis so much so that nothing in our history prepares us for such a time as this. All of us have become addicts in the North. A vast number of us are addicted to rage with the rest to delirium. In our foolishness, we tend to define our happiness as the other groups’ unhappiness”.
Dogara was speaking in a keynote address titled: “The Role of Youth Leadership in Warehousing the Youth burge in the North for Development and Progress “delivered at Zaar Youth Development Association (ZAYODA), Abuja Branch fundraising event held at the National Arts and Culture Centre Weekend.
According to him, “The problem with the North is more than unbridled violence. It is more than bandits and terrorists and the ungoverned spaces they occupy. I content that there is something in the North we have refused to see that the bandits and terrorists are harnessing. What is it that we have failed to see?
“We have failed to see that the North is now the largest killing field and the biggest cemetery in Nigeria and that the more human blood is shed, the more we bring the North under a curse. That unless we repent and the curse is lifted our collective labour and our resources will continue to lay in waste.
He lamented that “Every single one of us is complicit in this. Even the few of us who have dared to speak up are already outrage fatigued and have surrendered to fatalism- a feeling that nothing matters anymore. What we have done before doesn’t matter, all that matters is our present station. As long as we are not actively engaged in seeking for solutions to these intractable issues, we are actually, wittingly or unwittingly, actively promoting it.
“I have made this point on so many occasions that the North we all call home cannot survive if our peoples merely tolerate each other. Our strength is not and will never be in our numbers but in our unity. When we are United, we will be strong and when we strive to keep our bond and remain undivided, we will be invincible. This is what should concern every patriotic Northerner at the moment when we are held in contempt over our inability to stop the North from the ongoing death by a thousand cuts, he stated.
“Therefore, striving like there is no tomorrow, in order to make visible the promise of a reconciled, crisis free and prosperous North for all to see must be our most urgent endeavor as Northerners.
The former Speaker then declared that “Our most immediate problem is the dangerous drift of the North into chaos and anarchy. It is like all the four horsemen of the apocalypse have bolted . Apart from the rabid insecurity plaguing the north, there are charges of an Islamization agenda and ethnic cleansing and domination by a certain section. Attacks are unrelenting and there appears to be no end in sight.
He added that “the situation has clearly gotten out of hand, in the wake of wanton killings by Boko Haram/ISWAP terrorists and bandits, kidnap for ransom and mass abduction of school children in different parts of the North.
“We all know that the North bears nearly 90% of the insecurity brunt of the country. If estimates are anything to go by, not less than 100,000 northerners have been killed while over 3 million have been displaced in the Northeast alone. No one has the record of Northern lives lost to rural banditry, the famer-harder clashes and ethno-religious conflicts. The number grows exponentially when we add to this, death occasioned by urban violence unleashed by an increasing army of mostly jobless youths suffering from substance use disorder.
“Added to the above, is the threat posed by school dropouts and out of School children. A survey in 2015 put the number of out-of-school children in the country at 13.2 million. The latests MlCS data tells us that 69 per cent (9.1m)of out-of-school children in Nigeria are in Northern States. The problem is further compounded by the fact that the North just like other parts of Nigeria is in a demographic transition. The consequence of the “youth bulge” is that there are so many young people competing for limited number of career opportunities.
“Those who lose out and fail to secure a place in society have become frustrated, angry and violent as predicted. This set of young people easily surrender themselves for radicalization, as the timeless adage goes, “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop”.
“Instead of the “youth bulge” to be a blessing, it is fast leading to swapping of roles of our youths from productive labourers to disaffected rebels. What is left for us is to work out how to productively channel this restive energy. By 2050, the population of the North is projected to hit 240 million people out of which,156 million is projected to be young people of less than 29 years. How do we warehouse this demography now and in the future? This is not the only question, it is every question.
“If we cannot find a place for them in the society how will they view us and the society they will live in? The situation is such that even the most incurable Northern optimist cannot sleep in the face of these grim statistics.
According to him, “When it comes to prosperity, the North has not fared well either. Even when the North was not under siege by terrorists, bandits and sundry criminals; we accounted for not less than 87% of the poverty burden in Nigeria. To drive the point home, let’s compare Zamfara State with Lagos State. While Zamfara State has over 90% poverty incidence, Lagos State has less than 10%. The consequences of poverty are dire.
“As we speak, nine states of the North alone bear more than 50% of the malnutrition burden of the country. With most of our people trapped in vicious poverty circle, there is no way we can compete with other zones. How do we ensure our people develop mentality when we cannot feed them?
The former Speaker then concluded saying that “The North will rise by light not luck. All through history, civilizations were built by men and women who do not only knew the right things but did the right things they knew. But knowing the right things and not doing them is the text book definition of foolishness. You are not wise because you know the right things, you are wise because you do the right things you know”. END.
