Let us all face it: the problem with Northern Nigeria is not one of lack of liquid cash. Actually, with the discriminatory policy of Muhammadu Buhari, Arewa is flushed with cash as a result of lopsided federal appointments from this region, but what to do with that massive cash in-flow is a totally different matter.
Up here in the North, you’d observe that the trend amongst unemployed sub-30 youth is to cruise around town in expensive Merc automobiles that their pop or some highly-placed federal appointee at Abuja had sent down to the “family,” just loll around chatting away, get married before 26, fire off on all cylinders and birth six or seven kids before the age of 36, get a second wife, fire off on more cylinders, cruise around town some more in tinted-glass autos whilst still unemployed, and repeat the cycle until wife number four by which time a federal appointment would have come in to “chill out” at the EFCC, CAC, CBN, Printing and Minting, Nigerian Army Officer Corps, Customs, etc.
Amazing, it is in this North that you’d observe abject poverty because there is a layer of class-consciousness that precludes objective charity virtue geared towards poverty reduction. Who amongst the “money bags” pay tithes that are needed to help the poor? No, they smug to tell the wretched that their situations are divine, so take them or die now and be damned!
Sunday Adole Jonah,
Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State
