TheCable

Nasir el-Rufai, governor of Kaduna state, has likened the development in northern Nigeria to what is obtained in “war-ravaged” Afghanistan, saying the region is “unhealthy”.

Afghanistan, a landlocked country located in south-central Asia, is renowned for the incessant war that has left its economy in apparent “shambles” and its people “scattered and despondent”.

El-Rufai was speaking at the northern youth summit organized by Northern Hibiscus Initiative, in Kaduna on Saturday.

According to The Nation, the governor portrayed Nigeria as a picture of “two countries: a developing south and a backward, less educated and unhealthy north, with world’s highest number of poor people.”

He called on the governors of the 19 northern states to work in unison if they must tackle the issues ravaging the region effectively.

“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,” the governor said.

“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.”

El-Rufai lamented that the region has become a hub for activities such as drug abuse, banditry and kidnapping.

“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,” he said.

“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.

“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.”