The political air is thick with accusations from a section of the northern elite, alleging the marginalisation of their region under the current administration. This narrative, often weaponised to heat up the polity, conveniently sidesteps a monumental and uncomfortable historical truth: for approximately 46 of Nigeria’s over 65 post-independence years, the nation’s helm was held by leaders of northern extraction. The more piercing question, therefore, is not what others have failed to do for the North in two years, but what its own prolonged leadership failed to achieve over nearly five decades.
The major sources of water supply to most rural communities in the North today, including my community in Kogi State, remain public wells constructed in the late 1950s and early 1960s under the premiership of the Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello. Meagre as resources were at the time, development projects were relatively evenly spread across the region.
In sharp contrast, today’s North tells a tragic story. It is a region of extreme contradictions, where monumental opulence among a rent-seeking elite exists side by side with the worst indices of multidimensional poverty in Nigeria—and arguably in the developing world. The North leads in out-of-school children, illiteracy, unemployment, and a security crisis so profound that farmlands have been turned into killing fields. States such as Borno, Plateau, Niger, Kwara, Kogi, Benue, Taraba, Adamawa, Yobe, and Kaduna have become epicentres of anguish. As of today, Nasarawa State appears to be the only North-Central state largely spared from the ongoing carnage.
This grim reality is the legacy of decades of misgovernance by a so-called “Congress” of an entitled elite who perfected the art of sharing the “national cake” under the banner of the “19 Northern States,” only to micro-share it among a select circle of families from a fraction of those states.
Kidnapping, rather than farming, now threatens to become the most lucrative enterprise in many parts of the region. Ironically, everyone has become a potential victim, including the enablers who, through their actions or inactions, irrigated this monster. This reality raises a fundamental question northern political elites carefully avoid: what exactly did decades of power translate into for the ordinary Northerner—the Talakawa?
If Sir Ahmadu Bello were to rise from his grave today, he would encounter a homeland fractured beyond recognition—not only in infrastructure and development, but in its very soul. The North he left behind in 1966 was anchored on a philosophy of collective progress, captured in the motto “One North, One Destiny.” Under his leadership, merit and loyalty defined “Northernness.” Prominent non-Muslim, non-Hausa-Fulani figures such as J.S. Tarka, Sunday Awoniyi, and others from the Middle Belt were central to the region’s political project. Identity was never a barrier to inclusion or responsibility.
What emerged instead after 1966 was a bloated, entitled ruling class—overfed, overpampered, and deeply disconnected from the misery of the masses—standing opposite a disgruntled youth population, some of whom have drifted into banditry as a response to deepening socio-economic inequality.
While the people sank deeper into deprivation, a rent-seeking elite perfected the art of extracting value from the state without creating any for society. It is therefore morally bankrupt to accuse a barely two-and-a-half-year-old administration, led by a president from another region, of “marginalising the North,” when the region’s structural poverty is the cumulative outcome of decades of elite failure from within.
The most tragic irony is this: the North has been marginalised far more brutally by its own political elite than by any external force. Those who now shout loudest about “exclusion” were present, powerful, and influential during the formative years of Boko Haram in the North-East; when bandits began overrunning the North-West under figures such as Bello Turji; and when insecurity spilled into the North-Central, turning Niger, Kogi, Kwara, Benue, and Plateau states into theatres of bloodshed. These tragedies unfolded before their very eyes—apologies to the late Professor Pius Adesanmi—yet silence prevailed, so long as their children and cronies secured plum appointments in lucrative MDAs such as the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the former Federal Inland Revenue Service (now Nigerian Revenue Service), NIMASA, and the Nigerian Ports Authority.
For this class, governance was never about the people; it was about proximity to the treasury, our common patrimony, and the relentless feathering of private nests.
This reality stands in sharp contrast to the North Ahmadu Bello forged and bequeathed. His North was broad, inclusive, and ideologically coherent. Figures like Mallam Bello Ijumu, Sunday Awoniyi, Silas Dàníyàn, Salihu Attah, Alhaji Abdulrahman Okene, J.S. Tarka, and J.S. Olawoyin—despite his Awoist leanings—were as Northern as Tafawa Balewa, Bala Usman, Hassan Katsina, Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, Abubakar Rimi, or Aminu Kano. Northern identity was defined not by religion or ethnicity, but by shared destiny.
But today’s North is fractured beyond recognition. Beyond the Muslim–Christian divide, ethnic fault lines are widening, with some Hausa elements increasingly distancing themselves from their Fulani cousins with whom they have intermarried for generations. The once-unifying idea of a monolithic North has been replaced by a narrow, exclusionary identity policed by self-appointed custodians of “Northern interests.”
In this warped calculus, individuals like Bashir Bayo Ojulari and Ibrahim Agboola Gambari (both from Kwara); Joash Amupitan (from Kogi); George Akume (from Benue); Christopher Musa (from Kaduna) or even Kashim Shettima (from Borno) can suddenly become “not Northern enough” to occupy positions supposedly meant for the region. One is compelled to ask: is this about the North as a whole, the North-West alone, or a handful of families masquerading as a region?
The hypocrisy is most evident during power-sharing negotiations. When national resources are discussed or bloc votes are required in the National Assembly, the slogan becomes “the 19 Northern States.” Once those objectives are achieved, the goalposts shift mid-game, and benefits are cornered by elites from less than 40 percent of those states. Meanwhile, the Talakawa, on whose behalf trillions of naira are collected annually from FAAC, remain poor, insecure, and increasingly unable to farm due to the collapse of governance.
Even more disturbing is the elite’s hostility to renewal. The emergence of younger, vibrant Northern voices seeking socio-economic transformation is treated not as progress but as a threat. Such voices must be silenced, frustrated, or delegitimised—anything to preserve privilege and prolong access to state rents. The legacy of Ahmadu Bello, Aminu Kano, and Balarabe Musa—leaders who genuinely centred the Talakawa—has been abandoned for crude self-preservation.
So, would the Sardauna recognise this North if he were to wake today? A region where poverty cohabits with obscene elite wealth; where identity is weaponised to mask incompetence; where insecurity thrives alongside political indifference; and where the masses are invoked rhetorically but forgotten in practice.
The answer is a resounding NO.
Ahmadu Bello would see a region betrayed by its own sons—a place where elites built palatial mansions on the graves of the poor, traded collective destiny for private gain, and reduced a once-cohesive political force to a chorus of professional victims. The true marginalisation of the North was not inflicted by a two-and-a-half-year-old government, nor by less than two decades of leadership from the South, but by nearly five decades of elite failure from within.
Until this truth is confronted, the region’s path to redemption will remain obscured.
History suggests that the late Premier would not recognise today’s North, and that uncomfortable truth is precisely why the self-styled defenders of “Northern interests” fear honest reflection.
Abubakar writes from Ilorin, Kwara State. He can be reached via 0805 138 8285 or marxbayour@gmail.com.
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