AREWA - WHO DO WE BLAME?

[Dan-Borno]

since the statement of prof. soludo that over 70% of
notherners are leaving under abject poverty, so much
writing in support of what he said has been flying all
around in newspapers and every majalis.  every notherner
knows that the professor is saying the truth and there is
no point arguing against his statement for the glaring
evidences are too numerous to suppress.

now i said, if truly we are under a serious poverty threat
in the north, not to talk about education who are we to
put the blame?

DB's view
from my understanding, my blame goes to our religious leaders
and members of the academia.

my reasons will come shortly.......................................................

[HUSNAA]

Now hold it right there DB!!  >:( >:(
As a member of the academia I strongly OBJECT to yr statement. If anything YOU collectively as the political hegemony, are to blame! If I remember aright,   you are one of the supporters of the 'Yar adua regime even though you are an ANPP stalwart and knew full well that he came to power through the back door, and you deliberately turned yr back on Buhari whom we felt would have given the country some semblance of political sanity, becos as u put it, his style of politics was anathema to the nigerian political elite, in other words, you dont want an incorruptible leader! Rather the likes of OBJ who will let the politicians rob the masses blind in so far as they are in his good book! So dont you dare blame academics for the woes of northern nigeria. GGNK pointed out in a thread similar to this that in a part of Kano state, the ppl dropped a Phd holding senatorial candidate (who I am very sure was Dr. Bashir Galadanchi cos he was contesting the Kano central or something like that seat) and opted to elect to the senate  some nonentity who was so illiterate that his secondary sch certificate was forged in order to get him to qualify for the senatorial seat. That is the caliber of ppl that got us in the hot water we are in right now, and it was views like yours DB, that got him his illegitimate senatorial position.

PPS we dont have to look too far to see who should be blamed for this mess that we are in. Think Saminu Turaki, think Yeiman Bakura, think Ibrahim Mantu; three of the worst and greediest  political leaders the north has ever produced: mindless, manipulative selfish and greedy, with no thought for anyone save how they could further line their pockets and the worst of them was Bakura, who used religion to further his selfish ends and in the process, indirectly became responsible for one of the worst cases of genocide  ever seen in Nigeria since the civil war.

[Nuruddeen]

since the statement of prof. soludo that over 70% of
notherners are leaving under abject poverty, so much
writing in support of what he said has been flying all
around in newspapers and every majalis.  every notherner
knows that the professor is saying the truth and there is
no point arguing against his statement for the glaring
evidences are too numerous to suppress.

now i said, if truly we are under a serious poverty threat
in the north, not to talk about education who are we to
put the blame?

DB's view
from my understanding, my blame goes to our religious leaders
and members of the academia.

my reasons will come shortly.......................................................

Soludo: Why the North would miss him       

   

Give him half the chance and he would try to convince you that whatever your troubles, he worries about them more than you do. At every opportunity, Professor Charles Soludo, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) wastes no time in telling the world how deeply concerned he is obout the debilitating problem of poverty in northern Nigeria. And yet in the past eight years, nobody has done more to aggravate this problem than he had. His most recent offensive was a recruitment exercise into the CBN conducted between June 2007 and June this year. In all, Soludo had recruited 396 people; an incredible 340 of them from the South!

Squatting on this mounting of hypocrisy and injustice, the man was at his sarcastic best again last weekend in Kaduna where he was a speaker at a lecture event organized by the Northern Development Initiative. Last year, Soludo characterized poverty as a "Northern Phenomenon"; last week he called for a state of emergency to be declared on poverty in the north.

The CBN boss was correct on both occasions (as he was on many other occasions where he made similar remarks). It is also obvious that Soludo relishes the opportunity to insult the north publicly under the guise of patriotism and officialdom. On its part, the North certainly deserves no sympathy and no one should deny Soludo the right to gorge himself; he is only echoing loudly the silent opinion of most people from his part of the country, mainly the South; an opinion that is empirically verifiable.

Sometime in January this year, I came across an article written by the publisher of The Mirror newspaper, Prince Emeka Obasi, who is from the same south eastern part of Nigeria with Soludo. The article titled "Yar'Adua And The Future Of The North", which appeared in his back page column,' The Presidency' of the Sunday Mirror of 27/1, was well researched and the arguments forcefully presented. In the article, Mr. Obasi provided a perspective on what he believed to be the essential elements that define the North.

Throughout the article the author struggled to find the right adjectives to describe the peculiar and depressing characteristics of the Northern part of Nigeria without sounding too offensive or condescending. Unfortunately, there just isn't a polite way of telling a people that they have failed.

Drawing from statistics published by the National Poverty Alleviation Programme (NAPEP), Obasi correctly summed up the story of Northern Nigeria: it is the poorest and most backward part of Nigeria, and it is getting poorer and more backward! The NAPEP figures on the incidence of poverty in the six geo-political zones in the country as quoted by Prince Obasi speak for themselves. In the North-West, comprising Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Jigawa, Zamfara, Sokoto and Kebbi, 74 percent of the people is poor, that is they live on less than one dollar a day; in the North-East comprising Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Bauchi, Taraba and Gombe, the poverty rate is 78 percent; North Central comprising Plateau, Nasarawa., Kwara, Benue, Kogi, and Niger, the figure is 70 percent.

By contrast the South-West has about 28 percent; the South-South 30 percent, while the South-East, from where Soludo (lucky him) comes from, turned out to be the wealthiest part of Nigeria with a poverty rate of 23 percent.

Obasi did not add, because he didn't need to add, having used the portrait of a wretched beggar and his son to illustrate his views, that in addition to its poverty—or may be because of it—the North also has the highest concentration of beggars, of all ages, than anywhere else in the world; it has the lowest literacy rate in the country even though from independence to date, most of the commissioners or ministers of education had come from the North; it has the lowest per capita, or income per head in the country; although it has one of the highest school enrollment figures, yet it has the least number of students in tertiary institutions, making nonsense of its overall demographic and high school enrollment advantage. It has its fair share of moral depravity too; from Kaduna to Kano and Sokoto, cases of 60-year-old men defiling 14-year-old girls are rampant; in some cases fathers have been known to impregnate their underage daughters!

This is the brief, bleak summary of 'Soludo's North'. Can anything be worse than this? In other words, are there greater failures among the various peoples of Nigeria than those that make up the population of this most unfortunate region? Perhaps if the statistics on which part of the country produces the highest number of ruthless armed robbers, manufacturers of fake drugs, conmen or 419ners, were to be computed, there might be some kind of parallel: a contrast between one society intent on destroying itself, with another bent on destroying others. Neither is desirable of course and a combination of the two in any one country is an absolute disaster. As it is we have only one of verifiable statistics, so...

We all know on which side of the miserable divide Soludo belongs; and he knows it too. Also few people, if any, are in any doubt that given the chance Soludo would love the opportunity to transform the North from a region of beggars to a bastion of hopeless destitute. When he introduced his controversial banking reform, Soludo resolutely refused to modify it by introducing categorization; a situation whereby instead of a fixed N25bn for all banks, the requirement could be categorized to a base level of N10bn, a medium level of N15bn and Soludo's fixed level of N25bn. With support from former President Obasanjo, Soludo got his way; the result is that the North, thanks in whole to the greed, narrow vision and naked wickedness of its leadership class, is now completely marginalized in the financial system.

Every time I hear Soludo express his hypocritical concern for the North, I feel like throwing up, if possible on his suit. The lopsided recruitment the man supervised in the last one year, which were sighted earlier, did not come by accident; Soludo carefully, deliberately and cold-bloodedly contrived to further emasculate the North that he so much 'cares' for.

For instance, since becoming the CBN governor in 2004, he had launched relentless assaults on senior staff of the CBN that are from the North. He it was that terrorized Mrs. W. Mshelia, a former very competent deputy governor out of the CBN, frustrated another deputy governor, Dr. Shamsudden Sanusi, the current minister of finance and sacked a number of directors, most of whom were of northern origin. At the moment the deputy governor (corporate services); the special adviser, personnel; director human resources; all five deputy directors in the human resources department and the consultants that he hires to conduct recruitment exercises for the CBN, are all from the South! One then wonders how a thoroughly unrestrained ethnic jingoist like Soludo could have the audacity of voicing concern for a people to whom he would not even be fair.

Neither is Soludo's lack of fairness his only failings. Lately, his integrity has come under question. It used to be a subject of speculation; now it is officially confirmed that Nigeria's foremost banker is straight, to put it mildly. A report published mainly by the sister publication of this newspaper, the Daily Trust, on July 23 and 25 say that the high-powered Presidential Committee that investigated the affairs of the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) has unequivocally accused Soludo of "gross abuse of office, gross negligence, round tripping and money laundering".

That is very interesting. Soludo might have succeeded in getting Obasanjo to arm-twist the last legislature to pass the CBN Act which not only gives him unlimited powers (which he is accused of abusing), but makes it virtually impossible for the president to sanction him; but the Act did not give the CBN Governor protection against abuse of office and money laundering. It is difficult to imagine how he can talk himself out of this one. Which is just as well, the CBN and the country can certainly do without the likes of Soludo.

And so would the North, in one sense. In another sense, the North would miss Soludo; because we do need ruthless opportunists like him to turn the knife in our wounds, to remind our so called leadership class, whoever and where ever they are, that it is not enough to just admit failure, as Gen. T. Y. Danjuma had done when he fell out with his erstwhile buddy, Obasanjo. They have to demonstrate that remorse through concrete actions. So far there is nothing to suggest that they have learned anything! Its just talk talk talk.Deen Muhammad writes from Sunday Trust, on 27-07-2008 00:00