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| Femi Aribisala |
Without the North, Nigeria and Nigerians would be reduced to
nonentities.
In 2005, Goldman Sachs Investment Bank forecast that Nigeria will be the
20th largest economy in the world by 2025 and the 12th largest by 2050; ahead
of Italy, Canada and South Korea. Having identified Brazil, Russia, India and
China as four emergent powerhouses of the world economy referred to as the
BRICS; it included Nigeria among “the Next Eleven” countries of Bangladesh,
Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea,
Turkey, and Vietnam.
At the U.S.-Nigeria Trade and Investment Forum organised by the Nigerians in
Diaspora Organisation of the Americas (NIDOA) in Washington D.C. in 2012,
President Barack Obama of the United States acknowledged Nigeria not only as a
strategic centre of gravity in Africa; he went further to proclaim the country
“the world’s next economic giant.” Early this year, with the rebasing of the
country’s GDP, Nigeria emerged as the biggest economy in Africa, surpassing
South Africa.
Manifest destiny
It is no secret that Nigeria is a country of great potentials, even if that
potential is yet to be appreciably realised. One of the strengths of the
country is its large population. Currently estimated at 170 million, Nigeria is
the seventh largest country in the world. By 2050, Nigeria’s population is
projected by the United Nations to reach 389 million, rivaling that of the
United States at 403 million. By the end of the century, the U.N. projects that
Nigeria’s population would be between 900 million and 1 billion, nearing that
of China which would then be the second most populous country in the world
after India.
Nigeria’s economic size is a blessing in disguise. It means the country will
have a ready domestic market for its eventual industrial growth. It means it
can envisage economies of scale not possible in smaller countries. Even now,
Nigeria offers alluring returns for investors. Says Charles Robertson, Global
Chief Economist at Renaissance Capital: “We know it’s not risk free, but look
around the world and find another economy with 160 million people growing at 7
percent with such potential. It’s a struggle to find them.”
Countries go to war to acquire the kind of real estate that is Nigeria. This
makes it all the more ludicrous that there are noises coming out of Southern
Nigeria demanding that the country should be divided. The most ethnically
jingoistic of these is the insistence that Nigeria would be better off without
the North. It would appear that some Southern Nigerians have been intoxicated
by oil. Since there is no oil in the North, they conclude that the North is no
more than an albatross on the neck of the South and castigate it as a region
defined by dependency.
This view is nothing short of idiotic. No serious-minded country
relinquishes a region as rich and as resourceful as Northern Nigeria. Without
the North, Nigeria’s much-vaunted potentials would vanish. Without the North,
Nigeria would be nothing more than yet another balkanized and insignificant
African country, or group of countries. Take the North out of the Nigerian
equation and there can no longer be any black country in the world that can
possibly attain the status of a major power in the world. Without the North,
Nigeria and Nigerians would be reduced to nonentities.
Northern imperative
Nigerians have been blinded by oil. Because of oil, we have become
unproductively mono-cultural in our economy. However, oil is hardly the only
major resource we have. Although oil revenues have brought us a great deal of
financial prosperity, at the same time it stunted the inexorable emergence of
agro-based industries in Nigeria. The backbone of such promissory local
industries is in Northern Nigeria.
The North is the breadbasket of Nigeria. A significant proportion of the
food we eat down South comes from the North. The North occupies 70% of
Nigeria’s land mass, giving it comparative advantage vis-à-vis the South in
terms of agriculture, raw materials and livestock. A large chunk of the North
is arable and supportive of year-round food production. Thanks largely to the
North, there is no tropical agricultural crop known to man that cannot be grown
in Nigeria. With a transition from subsistence to mechanized agriculture,
Northern Nigeria alone can produce enough food to feed the whole of Africa.
Northern Nigeria is bigger than most African countries. Currently, Nigeria
wastes a staggering 1.3 trillion naira on food imports; virtually one-third of
the annual budget. But the North can produce all the food we need, thereby
liberating valuable resources. Already, it is the North that feeds the South in
Nigeria. Virtually all Southern food crops and livestock come from the North.
Much of Nigeria’s water resources are also in the North. With the right policy
mixes, the North will earn for Nigeria billions of dollars annually from
agriculture.
Our Niger-Delta brothers should not get too carried away by their oil. If
their oil is a national resource today, so will Northern agriculture and
agro-allied industries be national resources tomorrow. Oil is a wasting asset.
Short of new discoveries, Nigeria’s oil will expire within the next 50 years.
However, Northern agriculture will never expire.
Northern resources
There is something else besides. There can be no doubt that there is oil in
the North. It is only a matter of time before it is discovered. The geography
and topography of the North and the discovery of oil in surrounding areas is a
testament to this eventuality. Since there is oil in Cameroon, Chad and Niger
Republic, the chances are pretty good that Northern states like Bauchi, Borno,
Sokoto and Niger will one day become oil-producing states.
Moreover, the North is rich in mineral resources; far richer than the South.
There is gold in Zamfara; uranium in Taraba; tin-ore in Plateau; columbite in
Nassarawa; iron ore in Kogi; gysium in Gombe and limestone in Sokoto among
others. Hydroelectricity for the country is provided from Kainji Dam and
Shiroro Gorge. There are game reserves in the North including Argungu, which
make it a potential money-spinner for tourism, a possible Kenya in the making
if we can get rid of the scourge of Boko Haram.
Southern Nigerians should stop underestimating Northern industry.
Northerners created the ground-nut pyramids, cotton farms and tanneries of old.
With visionary national and regional leadership, these will surely make a
comeback. So also will the textile factories of Gusau, Kaduna and Kano. All the
Southern bigotry about the North being predominantly Moslem is just nonsense.
When you see what economic wonders Moslems are doing in places like Dubai,
Oman, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, you will realise that Nigeria
has a lot to learn from Moslems.
It should not be forgotten that by far the most enterprising Nigerian today
is a Northerner from Kano. According to the most recent Forbes Billionaires
list of March 2014, Aliko Dangote is now the 23rd richest man in the world with
a net worth of $25 billion dollars. This is an amazing feat for an African and
a Nigerian. Dangote is now richer than Alisher Usmanov; the richest man in
Russia. He is also richer than Mukesh Ambani; India’s richest man. Dangote is
all the more remarkable because he achieved this feat primarily through a route
far less travelled by Nigerians: the hard, difficult grind of manufacturing.
The Northern problem is the Nigerian problem. It is the problem of bad
leadership. Northern politicians and military leaders have been the bane of the
North and of Nigeria. They have grown fat at the expense of the poor. They have
deliberately kept the poor uneducated, preferring to feed them from the crumbs
falling from their table. But as Boko Haram bites deeper, this too shall pass.
A new generation of Northern leadership is emerging. An example of this is
Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano who is, by all accounts, redeeming his first-term as
Governor with the second-term.
Uneducated hogwash
All things considered, the boast of a Nigeria divorced from the North is
balderdash. Nigeria cannot do without the North. We cannot divide Nigeria into
350 ethnic nation-states. Let Southerners stop fooling ourselves. Any attempt
to abridge Nigeria because some Southern areas want to go it alone will be
disastrous. Ethnic homogeneity is no panacea against internal conflict. Somalia
is ethnically homogeneous. Nevertheless, it is a failed state. Southern Sudan
only recently obtained independence from Sudan. Nevertheless, it is already
embroiled in inter-ethnic conflict.
There can be no romantic Oduduwa Republic, unless we foolishly ignore the
long history of Yoruba wars. Try to turn back the clock, and the Egba, the
Ekiti, the Ijebu, the Ijesha and the Ilorin will start locking horns yet again.
Even now, there are daggers drawn between the Ife and Modakeke in Osun. There
can be no return to Biafra, unless we pretend that the differences between the
Aguleri and the Umuleri in Anambra or that between the Ezza and the Ezillo in
Ebonyi are fiction. The Igbo have never been united. Historically, they were
organized into separate and autonomous republics. Biafra itself had problems
with its ethnic minorities.
There can be no Republics of the Niger Delta. Are we then to divide the Efik
from the Ibibio, the Ijaw from the Itsekiri; the Kalabari from the Ogoja; and
the Ogoni from the Urhobos? What then would happen after the oil runs dry?
There can only be the Federal Republic of Nigeria. No matter what anyone
says, Nigeria is a country and a country it should remain. You don’t live
together for 50 to 100 years and not become a country. It does not matter if
some of us are Muslims and some are Christians: we are all Nigerians. It does
not matter if some of us speak Hausa and some speak Yoruba: we are all
Nigerians. Our diversity is our strength. That is the beauty of Nigeria. It
cannot be re-engineered.
Nigeria is a blessed country, carefully-crafted by divine ordinance. This is
not time to start hankering after some midget states when the herculean
Europeans are busy crafting a super-state. This is no time to think small. It
is time for Nigerians to start thinking big and bigger.
