The northern part of the country, with its huge land mass, still wallows in extreme poverty when compared to other regions. In this report, ELEOJO IDACHABA examines the alarm raised by respective leaders of thought from the region about the menace. According to them, the problem of the region is self- inflicted.
The Sanusi Lamido salvo
Again, the issue of poverty and its implication on Nigeria especially the economy of the northern part of the country came to the fore recently when the Emir of Kano, HRH Sanusi Lamido II, attributed the high rate of the menace in the region to what he called the incurable appetite for polygamous life by men whom he said love giving birth to plenty children without any arrangements to cater for them.
He said unless the people of the region change their lifestyles and attitude in that regard to face realities, the region would continue to be backward with many people likely to live below poverty line.
Sanusi made the remarks in a paper titled: ‘The Role of Universities in Nation Building’ in Gusau, the Zamfara state capital.
He said, “There are people who cannot afford to feed one wife, but are ready to marry three wives and have more children that they cannot feed, talk less of paying for their school fees.
“The poverty level of the north is 80 per cent while in the South, the percentage is 20 per cent simply because of the culture of marrying many wives and producing many children who at the end are left on the streets to beg for what to eat.
“The issues we have today such as drug abuse, Boko Haram, banditry and unemployment would be nothing compared to what we would be dealing with in the next 20 or 30 years.”
This is not the first time that the fiery royal father would say this. In 2018, during the ‘Youth, Security and National Development in Nigeria Summit’ held in Katsina, he also talked about the poverty level in the region, blaming it on the low-level attention being given to formal education as the main cause. He gave a frightening statistics when he noted that about one million children roam the streets of Kano as beggars unlike their peers in the western part of the country. He also urged leaders in the region to stop hiding under the guise of religion to impoverish the future generation.
“There are less than 500,000 pupils in public primary schools in Lagos state and almost three million in Kano state with an estimated one million roaming the streets as beggars. This means that most parents in Lagos state sponsor their children.
“As many people as possible must be given access to education if we are to achieve our human development goals and reduce the security challenges we are facing. One of the easiest ways is to absorb the millions of Qur’anic school pupils into the formal system.”
Also, in October 2017, the royal father informed another audience about the spate of poverty in the region, blaming it on what he called ‘frequent crises in some parts of the region. He said there cannot be prosperity where there is no peace. This time around, he was speaking during the Union Bank of Nigeria centenary celebration held in Lagos. In that meeting, Sanusi singled out Zamfara, Yobe and Kano states as having poverty rates as high as 91 per cent.
Sanusi, by his frequent assessment of human development indices in the north, may appear to have stirred the hornets’ nest as his opinion may sound unpopular in that region, but he no doubt laid the matter bare without minding whose ox is gored. The human development index shows that the referred royal father may not be wrong after all.
Sanusi corroborated
Speaking in the same vein, Dr Sani Muhammad of Bayero University Kano corroborated Sanusi by rolling out statistics to back up the assertion. According to him, “Statistics shows that in Kano and Zamfara states, three out of every four persons and over 91 per cent of the population live in extreme poverty compared to Lagos state whose poverty accounts for only nine percent. As a result, part of the worst human development indicators like unemployment, widened inequality, hunger, ignorance, diseases, violence, youth restiveness, to mention a few, bedevil the North and in effect, pose greater threat to security and stability. “In fact, studies indicate that poverty has doubled in more than 84 percent of northern communities since 1980 and consequently, the region remains in perpetual state of poverty amidst plenty.”
He said more often than not, the menace is associated with factors such as illiteracy, people’s attitude to economic prosperity, corruption, bad governance, child destitution (like almajiri, begging), income inequality, ethnic clashes and poor economic roadmap.
On a general note, the poverty rate, according to a 2012 survey carried out shows that out of the three regions that make up what are known as the North, the North-west is higher in poverty ranking with 77.7 per cent of its estimated population in relative poverty. It was followed closely by the North-east with 76.3 percent of its population in poverty. The North-central region comes next with 67.5 per cent of its population in relative poverty. This was, however, before the present drop in human capital development index brought about mainly by the activities of bandits, herdsmen and terrorism that have rendered the entire region into a shadow of itself lately.
The way out
It is believed that any government that puts human capital development in the front burner of its policies is on the way to coming out of poverty. To that extent, analysts are of the views that focusing on education, especially the girl-child education, investment in health and well-being of the citizens, provision of economic opportunities and modern technology coupled with political emancipation is well a way to overcoming poverty and backwardness
According to Muhammad Sani Abdullahi of the Ministry of Budget and National Planning, “The World Bank estimate shows that Nigeria is one of the seven countries that are home to nearly half of the world population. Financial inclusion is on the rise in the country, no doubt, but penetration in its poverty-stricken rural areas is still very limited.”
He noted that ending poverty in Nigeria, especially in the northern part of the country, entails improving the country’s economic productivity and opportunities for its citizens. He said this would mean investing in human capital potential and creating jobs for women and young people.
“Increased investment in healthcare is linked to economic growth and consequently to reducing poverty. Nigeria is battling with a number of crushing health indicators including malaria, tuberculosis and infant and maternal mortality, all of which have a sweeping impact on productivity.
“In order to end poverty, we must harness the demographic dividends through investment in health, education and livelihoods, especially for our young people,” he said.
El-Rufai’s jail threat over out-of-school kids
One may not like the face and utterances of the emir on his allegation that poor education accounts for the poverty in the North, but recently when Kaduna state governor, Malam Nasir el Rufai, threatened to jail any parent that fails to surrender their children to attend school, analysts say it was a corroboration of what the emir had said in the past.
Governor el Rufai, who spoke through the permanent secretary of the ministry of education, Mrs. Phoebe Yayi, in Kaduna last week, said “many parents are likely to serve different jail terms if they do not send their children to school.”
Quoting relevant sections of the law to back the threat, she said, “You should be aware that the Child Welfare and Protection Law, 2018, Section 18 (6) stipulates that any parent or guardian who fails to send his or her child to school commits an offence. Therefore, parents have no excuse not to send their children to school as the government has taken off all financial burden from parents,” she said. According to the latest Universal Basic Education Personnel Audit of the state, out of the 2,425,560 children between the ages of six and 11 years, an estimated number of 524,670 of them are out of school in the state, a number that would worry any leader interested in human development especially the future leaders.
No wonder, Kaduna state ranks highest in the number of out-of-school children especially almajiri who roam the streets in rag tags begging for food to eat. Many of such uncatered for children, analysts say constitute 60 per cent of the nuisance in the society.
NSA worried by the menace
In December 2019, the national security adviser, Babagana Monguno, had during the Almajiri system launch of the national security strategy 2019 by President Muhammadu Buhari in Abuja said there is a need to give urgent attention to the menace as it poses a great threat to the region and by extension the entire county. He said it could overwhelm the country in the nearest future if nothing is done about it. He noted that the almajiri issue should no longer be swept under the carpet, but must be jointly addressed urgently, adding that the new national security strategy provides comprehensive approach to addressing issues contributing the growing insecurity in the country, including the almajiri phenomenon.
Islamic cleric’s challenge to Muslims
According to an Islamic scholar, Sheikh Tijani Ajibola, while commenting on the threat posed by almajirai, said what is today known as almajiri does not have any root in Islam. He noted that the system of almajiri presupposes that children would be brought to an Islamic teacher under his tutelage to learn Islamic education. Upon graduation, such a child, he said, is given honourary award but without a certificate. “What we have today is that children of below the age of 10 are abandoned, neglected without parental care and love, but left to fend for themselves. They sleep wherever the night meets them, move about under the cloak of religion but hardly are they in any Qur’anic school and bereft of any sense of morality because society does not give them any. That is why they constitute a serious threat to the society. Such should be discouraged by any serious Muslim because Allah frowns at it. It is injustice and sheer wickedness to give birth to children and allow them to roam the streets as beggars,” he told Blueprint Weekend.
He said the right thing to do for those children is to either take them to a rehabilitation centre or should be registered in a formal education so as to avoid what he called a time bomb tickling to explode with time.
With the alarm raised by Emir Sanusi and the threat by El Rufai, it is no longer a farce that the problem of poverty in northern Nigerian states is self-inflicted; therefore, would require courage on the part of the leaders in the region to salvage the situation before it degenerates further.
