That Arewa may prosper…

Maybe an Arewa Co-prosperity Sphere is what is needed all this time since Nigeria attained its checkered “independence” in 1960; if this is not what is needed then one is at a loss to explain the sense of frustrations that Northerners feel in co-habiting with other tribal groups.

It is pure fallacy to conclude that the southern half has advanced appreciably because of their comparatively earlier contacts with the colonial masters and thus the peoples of the northern half must define the precepts with wish they wish to continue in this oft-pilloried flawed nation-building by Lord Lugard.

There is no good doing arrested development as a policy to hold a nation back, akin to the metaphor of throwing away a baby with the bath water; or, as the Idomas of Benue State have it couched in an adage, the fictitious “Mr. Oligbo inadvertently killing himself in the false belief that he would punish his belly by not eating a morsel at all.”

Just as Nigeria’s democracy and economy were stabilising in 1983 and Nigerians were experiencing an unprecedented second decade of peace and prosperity, a young General Muhammadu Buhari struck and truncated this national tranquil; in hindsight, this General railed at absolute nothingness because the economy was healthy prior to his intervention.

True to form, he and his successors continually ran Nigeria’s economy aground until it was almost comatose at the time of General Abacha’s death; the rusting industrial hulks of Kaduna is a painful testament to this fact. Instead of arresting Nigeria’s development, these Generals should have even encouraged a fast-track Arewa economic integration to provide competition for the Southern Nigeria economic sphere.

When Nigeria’s economy kicked off appreciably once again post-1999 and there was hope and enthusiasm everywhere, an Arewa pillar, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi of the Central Bank of Nigeria, threw a very large monkey wrench into the works and began incarcerating bank chiefs and thus dampening investors’ confidence once again: those who witnessed the banking sector crisis of the early 1990s would agree that Governor Sanusi’s action was a perfectly-choreographed witch-hunt; depositors’ saving were not in the least threatened when Sanusi struck and what we could surmise was an Arewa proactive financial police action to stem the tide of the banking-sector explosion being witnessed then.

We heard that monguls like Erastus Akingbola and Cecilia Ibru vowed to open at least a branch of Intercontinental Bank and Oceanic Bank in each of the 774 local government councils of Nigeria; instead of encouraging pro-Northern banks like Bank of the North and Habib Bank to enter into competition mode with the Intercontinental Bank, the Oceanic Bank, and suchlike Southern banks, the CBN Governor preferred the route of stifling progression.

Sunday Jonah

Minna, Niger Stat