Northern Nigeria now largest killing field, biggest cemetery – Dogara

Says everyone is complicit

By Abdulwahab Muhammad, Bauchi

Former Speaker, House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Yakubu Dogara has expressed dismay that the North bears nearly 90% of the insecurity brunt of the country, with an estimated 100,000 northerners killed and over 3 million displaced in the Northeast alone in the past decade.

Mr Dogara stated this in a keynote address delivered at Zayoda Fund Raising on the Role of Youth Leadership in Warehousing the Youth Burge in the North for Development and Progress held at the National Arts and Culture Abuja.

He pointed out that, a vast number of Nigerias are addicted to rage with the rest to delirium, “In our foolishness, we tend to define our happiness as the other groups’ unhappiness.” 

According to him, “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. 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.”

“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. 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.” 

Dogara went on, “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.”

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 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.

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. 

We preach against injustice but love to uphold it as inalienable tool with which we oppress others. 

We have glorified villains and vilified heroes. The list is endless. 

How we love to preach about the Pharaohs but always forget to add that since God has not changed, if we repeat what the pharaohs did, we will see what they saw. I pity those that think the solutions to our problems lies with President Tinubu’s policies. What we are suffering from has been the culmination of so many evils that we have perpetrated and tolerated for years. Therefore, except we uproot and eliminate violence from the North, no matter how sound President Tinubu’s policies are, they will amount to no more than cultural heroine which may keep a critical mass of our people addicted so long as the effect lasts but such policies cannot heal what ails the North. 

The North cannot continue running a therapy session for pyromaniacs and hope that our region will experience prosperity and development. We cannot lose the battle against violence and still keep our civilization. Since the State controls the coercive apparatus, our collective demand to Governments at all levels must be to free the North of all forms of violence. If we achieve this, we have found the solution to our most urgent problems. If we know how important this fight is, we will prevail on the Federal Government and State Governments to deploy all resources accruing to the North in the fight against terror and in rooting out general insecurity from the region. Instead of States building flyovers in a region witnessing unremitting blood letting, the resources should be channeled to securing the region and where a State cannot achieve much, they can form zonal alliances and deploy resources in the fight against terror until victory is won. 

This is the North in which you are called to exercise leadership. There are lots of nerves in the air. The German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsch once said, “the surest way to corrupt the youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently”.  Youth leaders across ethnic and religious lines must learn to build networks, if they must be of any help in our efforts to combat insecurity in the North. 

We have a model in Zaar land that is working. Talking about the peace committee between the Zaar and the Fulanis in Tafawa Balewa/Bogoro LGAs of Bauchi State which has ensured that for more than a decade now, no crisis has erupted in this area that was a national flash point and a seat of bedlam. By networking with others, youth leaders from our community can share the success story of this alliance with their counterparts thereby enabling others to replicate it across communities in the North.

In summary, the youth leadership that must contribute in arresting youth restiveness in the North, must be the one that believes:

that history does not just happen to us, we make history happen. Leadership that knows that not  everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced. 

that injury has pain but recovery also has pain. If you have to get healed, you have to endure the pain and that life will never stop to accommodate your comfort. 

that true greatness means love, humility, and service. A life that is significant—one that stands out and makes a difference—is a life that points others to God, rather than yourself. Looking Godward rather than inward is key to making lasting impact.

in stewardship. The goal of stewardship is to make the best possible use of what we have in order to make the greatest possible impact on society.

that the Government is limited and therefore limited in what it can do for individual citizens. It can do much but not everything. As difficult a message to sell, but it is the raw truth. 

That fortune itself favors the brave and the miracle we are looking for may well lie in the work of unifying our people which we seem to be avoiding.

Finally, it is said that nothing has ever lasted unless it was created by pain. It is by suffering that humans become angels. Be not deceived, the work of arresting youth restiveness will be painful and progress would be painfully slow. We may have been crying ourselves to sleep over the permacrisis that have engulfed the North but believe me, we won’t own that destitution forever if we all work together to stymie it. We will rise by what we plant, not by what we seek to harvest. Go out from here determined to start planting peace. We have no option but to come together as one people to rebuild the North and by extension, our nation, Nigeria. 

In closing, I call on you to build networks across peoples of all faith and be deliberate about working together- Christians and Muslims, women and men, the youths and the old; in accommodating and defending the interest of each other until we build the North and Nigeria of our dreams. Anyone who tells you that we can remain divided and still build a civilization is either a fool himself or is taking you for a fool as he will have no historical parallel to point to. Let’s go back to how we were brought up so that it may be well with us.