Northern Nigeria – A tragedy of abdication

Northern Nigeria is fast approaching the status of a basket case – if, indeed, it has not already arrived at that grim destination. This is not an emotional exaggeration, nor the familiar rhetoric of regional self-pity. It is a sober diagnosis grounded in social decay, economic regression, institutional collapse, and a profound crisis of leadership. The irony is cruel: a region that once stood as a reference point for order, probity, and administrative discipline has, within a single democratic era, lost much of its moral and developmental compass.

The political dispensation inaugurated in 1999 has, for Northern Nigeria, turned out to be less a rebirth than a prolonged unravelling. For decades prior, the region – despite its many internal diversities – was consciously and deliberately held together by an elite that understood power as responsibility and leadership as sacrifice. The founding fathers of the North did not deny ethnic plurality; they transcended it by weaving a shared political and moral identity anchored on restraint, loyalty, fidelity to the public good, and an almost austere sense of honour in public life. Governance was imperfect, but it was guided by an ethic. That ethic has since collapsed.

What distinguishes the post-1999 era is not merely civilian rule, but the wholesale erosion of leadership standards. At every level – federal, state, and local – politics has been emptied of vision and refilled with appetite. The transition to democracy coincided with a tragic abdication by many of those with pedigree, competence, and historical consciousness. Whether out of disdain for the excesses of partisan politics, fear of character assassination, or the mistaken belief that “the system would self-correct,” the old guard retreated. In their absence emerged a new political class with little preparation for governance and even less commitment to it.

That abdication was the North’s original sin of the Fourth Republic.

Politics ceased to be a calling and became an occupation. Public office transformed into an investment portfolio. Elections were no longer mechanisms for choosing leaders but battlegrounds for capturing access to state resources. The language of service disappeared, replaced by the crude arithmetic of sharing formulas, security votes, and patronage networks. Over time, governance itself became incidental – an afterthought once power had been secured.

The economic consequences have been devastating. Northern Nigeria, once defined by productive agriculture, trading networks, and early industrial initiatives, has been reduced largely to a supplier of raw materials for industries located elsewhere. Value addition happens outside the region; profits accrue elsewhere; jobs are created elsewhere. What remains behind is environmental degradation, youth unemployment, and a sense of permanent economic exclusion. The failure to industrialise agriculture – despite abundant land and labour – is one of the most damning indictments of northern leadership in the last two decades.

Socially, the decline is even more alarming. Education, the historical backbone of northern advancement, has been allowed to rot. Public schools have deteriorated into warehouses of despair. Teacher training institutions collapsed. Millions of children roam the streets without skills, hope, or prospects, forming a vast reserve army for crime, extremism, and political thuggery. Health systems mirror the same neglect: hollowed-out hospitals, absent personnel, and a ruling elite that treats medical tourism as a badge of success rather than a confession of failure.

Insecurity, however, is both the most visible symptom and the most perverse outcome of this decline. Kidnapping for ransom, cattle rustling, armed banditry, and violent extremism now constitute what can only be described as a shadow economy. In some areas, insecurity is no longer an aberration; it is an industry. Entire communities are trapped between criminal gangs and a state that appears either incapable or unwilling to protect them. Worse still, insecurity has become politically useful – providing justification for opaque spending, emergency powers, and the permanent suspension of accountability.

What makes this especially tragic is the moral inversion that now defines public discourse. Performative religiosity and ethnic mobilisation have replaced ethical governance. Identity is routinely weaponised to shield incompetence and corruption. Those who demand accountability are branded enemies of faith or traitors to the collective. This culture of intimidation has silenced critical voices and normalised mediocrity. The result is a society where failure is explained away, not confronted.

Yet, to declare Northern Nigeria irredeemable would be both analytically false and politically dangerous. Regions do not decay by fate; they decay by choices – and by the tolerance of bad choices. The same North that once produced disciplined administrators, visionary planners, and leaders who lived modestly despite immense power is not genetically incapable of renewal. What is required is not nostalgia, but reckoning.

That reckoning must begin with leadership recruitment. The region must consciously reject the cult of the strongman, the godfather, and the ethnic champion, and instead prioritise competence, character, and capacity. Second, the educated elite must end its long retreat from politics. The notion that politics is inherently dirty – and therefore best left to the worst people – has cost the North dearly. Abdication is not neutrality; it is complicity. Third, development must be reimagined in concrete terms: mass investment in basic education, aggressive human capital development, genuine security sector reform rooted in community trust, and a deliberate strategy to industrialize agriculture and retain value within the region.

Northern Nigeria’s crisis is deep, but it is not terminal. What is terminal is denial. The basket-case narrative becomes destiny only when resignation replaces resolve. The real question confronting the region today is not whether it has fallen – it clearly has – but whether it possesses the courage, honesty, and discipline to rise again.

Toungo wrote from Abuja via [email protected]

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