The North should save itself (1)

The Moment

13 March 2012

The North should save itself (1)

By Dominik Umosen

BY now, it has been made crystal-clear from the public utterances of opinion leaders from the area that the incidence of poverty is greater in the North-Western and North-Eastern parts of Nigeria than elsewhere  in the country. 

As a matter of fact, in its Year 2010 Poverty Profile for Nigeria, the National Bureau of Statistics,  NBS,  cited  tear-jerking poverty as the epicentre of the murderous  Boko Haram religious extremism now ravaging several parts of the once- peaceful northern Nigeria.

I recall with nostalgia, those swinging days of yore when you could  embark on spur-of-the-moment junkets, criss-crossing pristine terrain, just to admire  the panorama of stretches of virgin land just for the fun of it.

But the NBS  did not credit oil-producing parts of Nigeria with responsibility for the historical problems of the north..

For the sake of the records, it is necessary to recall that this allegory of poverty- driven  violence  was popularized by opinion leaders from that part of the country, or at least by sections of it.

But whereas the opinion leaders appear united on the incidence of poverty in that part of the country , the unanimity of  contributory factors for this prevalence  appear to have been reduced to a matter of sophistry by the respective leaders.