El-rufai paints bleak picture of the North, says it’s backward, unhealthy

Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai has painted a bleak picture of the Northern part of the country, declaring that the region is backward, less educated and unhealthy.

The governor stated this at the Northern Youth Summit in Kaduna organised by Northern Hibiscus, an NGO.

According to him, Nigeria is like two countries in one, comprising of a developing South and a backward, less educated and unhealthy north, with the highest number of poor people in the world, adding that the problems can only be tackled if the governors of the 19 states of the North can work together.

He said: “Looking at the statistics, Nigeria appears to be a middle income country. But, if we segregate those statistics across states and zones, you will see that, in terms of human development indicators, Nigeria consists of two countries; there is a backward, less educated and unhealthy northern Nigeria, and a developing, largely educated and healthy southern Nigeria.

“We have to speak the truth to ourselves and ask why is it that northern Nigeria has development indicators similar to Afghanistan, a country still at war?

“We have the largest number of poor people in the world, most of them in northern Nigeria. Nigeria also has the largest number of out of school children, virtually all of them in Northern Nigeria.

“Northern Nigeria has become the centre of drug abuse, gender violence, banditry, kidnapping and terrorism. We have also been associated with high divorce rate and breakdown of families. These are the challenges that confront us. This is the naked truth that we have to tell ourselves.

“We must therefore, as leaders at all levels, have conversation about the way forward for our part of the country. Because increasingly, as many of you must have seen on social media, we are being considered as the parasite of the federal economy, even though, that is not entirely true. Because northern Nigeria still feeds the nation. The richest business man in Nigeria is still Aliko Dangote, not someone from Southern Nigeria, thank God for that.

“So, we still have a lot to be proud of. We should be proud of our culture and tradition, as well as unity. You hardly can find someone from northern Nigeria convicted of 419 or being a Yahoo boy. That is something we should be proud of.

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“We are generally considered to be more honest and less corrupt than other Nigerians. That is something we should be proud of. In addition, our demographic superiority gives us a very powerful tool to negotiate in politics. And that is something we should be proud of and we should preserve. So, we have every reason to unite and not be divided.”

Asking northern youths to rise up to the challenge, the governor said further: ”I therefore call on you the youth, you account for 80 per cent of the northern population and the future of this region lies in your hands, not in the hands of dinosaurs like me.

“I’m 59 and among the oldest five per cent of the northern population. I shouldn’t even be governor; I should have been governor 10 years ago. But ‘na condition make crayfish bend’, so we are here.”

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