Browsing: Northern Nigeria

As reporters and analysts, we must inform, based on trends, and where possible, raise the alarm, hoping that those in authority will heed. In 2018, six years ago, that was what I did. And so, this is just a rehash of my article “Insecurity, the North under siege” written on this page on 24 December 2018.

The Nigerian Civil War had a profound impact on the country’s socio-economic landscape. One notable change was the transformation of the itinerant tailor profession, which shifted from being primarily located in Eastern Nigeria to predominantly Northern Nigeria. This shift serves as a metaphor for the divergent paths taken by these two regions in terms of social and economic development.

From time immemorial, agriculture was Nigeria’s economic mainstay, however, overtime, agriculture has been relegated to the background for obvious reasons, it’s on record that Nigeria’s endowment with vast natural resources of arable land from the stretch of savanna grassland, the dense swamp and rainforest, the untapped and unhannessed abundant quantities of solid minerals almost all over the country have either been misused or put to abandonment over the years.

Back in 1995, I had the privilege of being part of a media team that interviewed late President Shehu Shagari at his residence in Shagari village. It was a period when Nigeria was in search of determination, when sociocultural groups became rallying points for the expression and assertion of sectional and ethnic interests.