How Northerners, Arewa leaders caused North’s underdevelopment — Shehu Sani

Civil rights activist and former member of the Senate from Kaduna Central district, Shehu Sani, has said that Northerners should blame themselves for the underdevelopment in the region, while also knocking Arewa leaders for drawing the country backward for the past five decades.

Sani, in a statement on his Facebook account on Sunday, said no one must be held accountable for the present economic and social woes ravaging the North, but the Arewa people themselves who have decided to undermine all indices of socio-economic growth and development.

He said, “Many of us, Northerners don’t want our spouses to work or use their skills or talents to earn a living or contribute to the family. When we die, we leave them as helpless widows at the mercy of a hostile society.

“Most young people don’t want to serve as apprentices in workshops or retail outlets because they lack the heart and patience to serve.

“Many parents in rural areas hand over their children to a religious teacher in the city, who depends on the children to beg or steal in order to feed himself and his family. For ethnic, religious, and sectional reasons, we have protected, defended, praised, and refused to hold accountable all our kinsmen who led the country at every wasted opportunity for five decades.

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“The bandits and terrorists who kill and kidnap our people, deny our farmers access to their farms, and prevent our children from going to school are not from any foreign country or from the south; they come from our homes and families up north. We worship with them in the same mosque. We used to live together as one region in peace, brotherhood, and love, but then we divided and began to hate ourselves along religious lines.

“We, Northerners don’t vote for people who will serve us; we vote for those who will provide us with spaghetti and grains. We concoct and spread all sorts of religiously inclined conspiracies to deny our children free health immunisation against diseases, resulting in hundreds of thousands of blind, lame, crippled, and deaf children who grow up as victims of polio, glaucoma, or leprosy, begging in northern and southern cities. Many of our women and girls don’t have a business capital of 100k but own an iPhone worth N1.5m. They don’t have capital of 100k but can ‘struggle’ to meet up with a wedding asoebi of 500k.

“We deny most of our girls the right to go beyond secondary school due to negative perceptions about higher education. We don’t want our female children to wear uniforms. Whenever recruitment portals for the Army, Police, Customs, Immigration, and Civil Defence open, we don’t want our female wards to apply.

“When our children graduate from universities, especially public universities, most of the parents who attend to celebrate and appreciate their children are from the southern regions. Most of our industries and factories in Kano, Kaduna, and Jos have since closed down when our kinsmen were in power. Our farmers in rural areas are still farming with hoes throughout the period our kinsmen were in power. The groundnut and cotton pyramids disappeared long ago when our kinsmen were at the helm.

“All the spare parts, building materials, and pharmaceutical stores in the north are private businesses owned by people from other regions who were not backed, funded, or supported by any government. When our kinsmen were in power, we attributed our poverty and insecurity to God and to our sins; when our kinsmen are out of power, we attribute our sufferings to the King.

“The FCT is in the north. Can anyone explain why people from the region couldn’t dominate the private businesses in the FCT, Suleja, and Mararaba? Who should be blamed for this?

“God gave us the largest land mass, the largest number of people, most of the rivers, and resources and livestock, and gave us power for the most part of our history. Which of the favours of our Lord can we deny? The North; eighty percent of our problems are ourselves and not anyone ‘outside of ourselves.”