Yayale Ahmed, former SGF, reveals cause of widespread poverty in Northern Nigeria

Yayale Ahmed, a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, has claimed that ethnicity and religious intolerance are the main factors causing poverty and strife in Northern Nigeria.

The former SGF said this on Friday during a one-day dialogue session hosted by Arewa New Agenda with the topic “Renewed hope: the road to ending poverty in Nigeria.”

According to Ahmed, religious and ethnic differences have kept the north from developing, saying that the region needs to adjust by studying the recent history of the region’s development to see how it was able to advance.

He said that until something changed, the region would not matter in the greater scheme of things in Nigeria.

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“Poverty will not ordinarily go away from Northern Nigeria, and so far, it will continue even at our different levels and to emphasise our differences with a measure of pretentious loyalty to our region. The first thing that we will do that is dialogue is to agree that all of us are one.

“I would like to emphasise that to reduce poverty in Nigeria, we have to embrace each other, we have to tolerate each other, we have to respect each other, and we have to be solemn. I am appealing that, first of all, we should realize that our main problem is tolerance, accommodation, and respect,” he said.

He insisted that ‘if problems related to race and religion have persisted and we have not been able to eradicate them, then the region should embrace and tolerate one another.”

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