RE: 2019, THE NORTH MUST RETAIN PRESIDENCY

The National President, Arewa Youth Forum, (AYF), Alhaji Gamboa Ibrahim Gujungu must have been refering to "whatever is left of NIGERIA." I imagine that this would not include the Om'Odua. I do not see how it could.

I have posed the following question to Katsina State Governor, Aminu Masari: What is the pesidency worth to the northern masses? My answer is: NOTHING AT ALL.
Read on:

MASARI HAILS BUHARI'S GOVERNMENT OF LIMITED OBJECTIVES - May 2, 2016
Katsina State governor, Aminu Bello Masari has been reported in the media to have said that northern Nigeria would have been in misery had former President Goodluck Jonathan won the 2015 presidential election.

Speaking at the 33rd annual symposium in memory of late Malam Aminu Kano, Governor Masari described the situation the north found itself as precarious in which the region fell short in every aspect of human development. If the governor had been following the annual UNDP report on Human Development, he would have noted that the indices for the north have been dismal at best over at least three decades. No northern dominated federal administration has yet been able to reverse that trend. Most Nigerians will easily agree that that is one of the reasons why Buhari was elected into office.

On the comment by Governor Masari that the lives of the people of northern Nigeria have been rendered valueless by the Boko Haram insurgency, it is clearly up to the citizens in the north to decide to change that narrative.

He maintained that the emergence of Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s president brought a glimmer of hope to the north and anticipation of the return of socio-economic prosperity.

With Buhari now in power, are we then to understand that the north is no longer in misery even as we speak? Are the people of the northern parts of Nigeria exactly ecstatic now that another northerner is president? Has the Buhari presidency, eleven months and counting, been of much help, any help? Somebody should please answer me.

I was 19years old at the start of the Biafran war in which I was a participant. I know what misery looks like. Currently I see it on the faces of internally displaced persons wandering to God-knows-where with only what they can carry on their heads. I see it on the faces of hospitalized suicide bomb victims, lucky to be alive. I see it in the regular television footage of despoiled Agatuland with the natives expelled from their now destroyed homes and farms and forced to eke out a precarious living on the streets of Oturkpo, Gboko and Makurdi. That's misery live, and it is still very much with us, the Buhari presidency notwithstanding. Obviously Governor Masari, a Katsina State blood brother of President Buhari, is ignoring the facts on the ground and hence celebrating too soon.

When a gang up of otherwise enlightened Arewa politicians decided to foist a government of limited objectives on hapless Nigerians, they got more than a little help from the likes of Tinubu, Fashola, Onu, Oyegun, Ngige and my humble self. The question is clearly what do we do next? Nobody eats the presidency, as intangible as it is.
One version of the above report has Gov Masari indicating a desire for the president to fast-track the establishment of three or four megaprojects in the north. I cannot resist asking: Who will work on these projects? The Almajiri ill-prepared for the 21st Century? In the end, planners, engineers, architects, welders and craftsmen will have to be hired from China, Pakistan, India, Abia State and also Anambra, Edo, Delta, Oyo, Ondo, Ogun, etc. I am sure that readers have gotten my drift. .

Gov Masari seems not to have learnt that the problems of the north, which have kept it shackled to poverty, are quite fundamental. We must keep repeating them. Universal education is one. Former president Jonathan, against common wisdom and consternation of a few southerners, built model schools for the Almajiri. They remain more or less empty while the elite see no evil. On the health front, the north remains a place where a routine outing for an immunization exercise could turn out to be an appointment with death. We keep ignoring these issues to our own peril. The north must confront its demons and fight its way out. It is not going to be easy though. Meanwhile I wish Buhari and the entire north well.