The virus ravaging Nigeria

The South African poet, Oswald Mtshali, did not have Nigeria’s North in mind when he wrote that “Nightfall comes like/ a dreaded disease/Seeping through the pores/Of a healthy body/And ravaging it beyond repair.” But certain coup plotters did. During the aborted April 1990 military coup, Major Gideon Orkar and his co-mutineers announced the excision of five northern states, namely Sokoto, Borno, Katsina, Kano and Bauchi, from Nigeria. Orkar accused northern leaders of monopolising power and marginalising the Middle Belt and the South. Orkar was executed, but his thesis—that the leaders of Nigeria’s North, particularly the core North, were holding Nigeria back—remains unassailable. Today, for want of a more severe word, Nigeria’s North portrays the image of a parasite. It is a virus ravaging Nigeria’s body beyond repair and confining its fortunes to the Stone Age, chiefly on account of these pestilential leaders.

Think of everything wrong with Nigeria, and the North immediately comes to mind. The region receives a disproportionate share of Nigeria’s federal allocation compared to its IGR and VAT contributions, but accounts for the vast majority of the out-of-school children. Out of the roughly 18.5 to 20 million out-of-school children nationwide, an estimated 15 million (about 80%) are located in the northern states. Northern Nigeria accounted for a majority of recorded insecurity incidents between January 2 and April 22, 2025. According to Beacon Consulting, an indigenous firm tracking situations in the country, the North-West, North-East and North Central regions accounted for 79 per cent of the insecurity incidents. Because northern leaders looted the treasury blind for ages and expended the loot on women, wine and disease, the region is today ravaged by diverse terror groups, including Fulani herders, Boko Haram, ISWAP, bandits, Lakurawa and Mahmuda. The North-West, the region that troubled Orkar and his gang, was alone responsible for 37 per cent of all reported insecurity incidents within the period. The illicit arms market in Nigeria, worth an estimated $1 billion, is essentially a northern affliction. Through the military, the North robbed Nigeria blind, creating states and LGs to corner the national wealth. If the demented dictator Sani Abacha had not died in disgraceful circumstances, the North would have continued the game that caused Lt-Gen Oladipo Diya, ex-Chief of General Staff, to call for a Sovereign National Conference at the Oputa Panel.

Today, the major contribution of the core North elite is the creation of terrorists invading the rest of the country and committing genocide, rape and robbery. In September 2021, the then Gombe State governor, Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya, urged southern states to reconsider their push for state-level VAT collection. He wanted them to be their “brother’s keeper”, warning that exclusively retaining VAT would have severe economic consequences for other regions. But if northerners breed recklessly, should other people be expected to bear the responsibility?

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The northern elite act like a weapon fashioned against Nigeria. Despite federal attempts to eliminate blanket concessionary exchange rates, northern state governments consistently waste billions on religious pilgrimages. A June 2025 report by FIJ showed that despite mounting debt burdens, 10 Nigerian state governments collectively spent more than ₦13.1 billion on Hajj pilgrimage. Eight of them were from the North. Specifically, Kebbi State borrowed ₦10 billion to fund Hajj operations despite generating only ₦18.4 billion in total IGR. Kano State committed ₦1.45 billion to the same venture. According to The Punch, five highly indebted states budgeted a combined ₦9 billion purely for pilgrimage welfare. When the governors are not flushing billions down the drain on this venture, they are wasting it on mass weddings that only breed untrained, uneducated children who end up getting drafted into the terror networks that abduct school children from other parts of the country. Currently, they spend between ₦1.5 billion and ₦2.5 billion on each episode, which frequently breaks down to roughly ₦1 million per couple. Go to Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, Jigawa, and Kano, and watch the barbarism on full display.

In an April 25, 2013 piece titled “Amnesty: North’s dangerous game”, I observed as follows: “There was a time that northern leaders thought that Boko Haram was cool. If the Niger Delta militants could shake the nation to its foundations, their own boys too could. Boko Haram was started by certain religious lunatics, but the northern power brokers soon found in it a powerful tool for holding the rest of the nation to ransom.” I added: “Boko Haram has gone haywire and its former sponsors now live in fear, especially faced with the gripping reality of al-Qaeda linkage. Boko Haram has graduated from a tool for sabotaging a southern presidency into a potent threat even for the traditional institutions and across religious divides. Boko Haram is no longer cool but deadly…”

In November last year, certain northern clerics and community members took to the streets, burning the American flag and denouncing US President Donald Trump following his call for U.S. military intervention against terrorists in Nigeria. As they declared: “These bandits are our sons, brothers, and fathers.” I flayed these wackos in my piece, “What shall we call northerners defending terrorists?”, but defending evil is inextricably lodged in their DNA. Throughout Nigeria’s history, the leaders of Nigeria’s core North have looked for ways to shortchange Southern Nigeria, but they have never expended their loot on anyone but themselves. As I wrote on this page on June 18, 2022: “On July 1, the Senate passed the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) 2021, 13 years after its initial presentation to the National Assembly. Without batting an eyelid, Senate President Lawan’s Senate jettisoned the 10 per cent equity shareholding for oil-producing communities recommended by its own committee and pruned it down to a bare 3 per cent. It was then earmarked for oil exploration in the North, 30 per cent of profits accruing from oil and gas operations by the NNPC in Nigeria’s South. Enthralled by this brazen act of political armed robbery, the hawks in the North hailed Lawan for “protecting the northern interest” in other people’s money.”

Today, a terror sympathiser like Sheikh Gumi is walking free while terrorists play ping-pong with people’s lives, and southerners are continually sacrificed in theatres of war created by northern leaders. Commendably, President Bola Tinubu has decentralised the Nigerian Army Depot network, establishing Depots in Osogbo and Abakaliki, but it is time those who create the wars funded by taxpayers’ money and waste the blood of innocent youngsters met their Waterloo. Innocent people can’t keep dying in wars designed to last for millennia.

You cannot unleash a gang of terrorists on the rest of the country and expect zero consequences. If northern leaders want to continue encouraging mass breeding of out-of-school children, let them take up the burden of managing the terrorism that results therefrom. The rest of Nigeria is tired of bearing the brunt of their ruinous leadership. If you want your own children permanently in the bush rearing animals, good for you. But sending demons to prey on other people’s children in schools and other places is what we are never going to accept. The rest of Nigeria is tired of funding your terror industry through ransom payments. The children you refused to train cannot keep unleashing sorrow, tears and blood on the rest of Nigeria.