By Emameh Gabriel
Rabiu Kwankwaso knows the steps to this dance well, and he knows when to take one. He is a veteran of the modern political school, who will go as far as leveraging his Red Cap movement in an attempt to intimidate even a sitting President, perhaps coerce him by weaponising ethnic narratives, a tactic that has become his stock-in-trade.
On Monday, the former Kano State governor glided out of Aso Rock – his second visit this season – after another hushed meeting with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The cameras, ever dutiful, captured the usual: firm handshakes, the practised grins, the carefully measured body language of men who understand power. What was traded in that closed room? Promises? Demands? Disagreement? Mere pleasantries? These things rarely escape those walls intact.
But politics, like the harmattan wind, changes direction without warning.
By Thursday, the same man who had smiled so warmly beside Tinubu was now sharpening his knives in public. According to Kwankwaso, the North was being bled dry – abandoned to insecurity and poverty while the federal government lavished its attention on the South. Never mind that he had just left the President’s office without a word of protest. Never mind that the almajiri children still wander Kano’s streets in their thousands, just as they did when he was governor.
There is an old trick in these parts of the world. When a man cannot account for his own failures, he points at the next man’s house. Kwankwaso, a veteran of this game, knows the script by heart. He knows 2027 will come with high stakes maneuvering and political horse trading. His best strategy to force the hands of the President is to weaponise ethnic narratives.
The truth is simpler, and far uglier. The challenges confronting the North today, were not inflicted in Abuja. They were carved over decades by its own leaders – men who built palaces while their people starved, who sent their children to Oxford while their schools crumbled, who now cry “marginalisation” when called to account.
Kaduna State Governor, Uba Sani recently broke ranks with this tired narrative. He didn’t mince words when speaking the uncomfortable truth: northern leaders have failed their people through decades of neglect. He cited statistics that many believe should prompt figures like Kwankwaso to reflect and chart a new course—to rescue the region from decades of mismanagement by its political elite in the region.
The statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) prove him devastatingly right. The 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index survey reveals a stark North-South divide in Nigeria’s poverty crisis, with the Northern region bearing the heaviest burden. The report shows a staggering 65% of Nigeria’s poor – about 86 million people – live in the North, compared to 35% (47 million) in the South. Poverty levels vary dramatically across states, from 27% in Ondo to an alarming 91% in Sokoto, painting a picture of severe regional inequality.
The North-West and North-East zones show particularly distressing numbers, where 90% of children live in poverty, compared to 65.1% in the South-West. Rural areas in the North suffer most acutely, with 72% of residents experiencing multidimensional poverty versus 42% in urban centers.
The data exposes crushing deprivations in basic necessities across Northern communities – from reliance on dirty cooking fuels like dung and wood to inadequate sanitation, food insecurity, and poor housing. Perhaps most troubling is the education crisis, where only 2.1% of households have a teenager who completed primary school, condemning future generations to continued poverty. These findings, collected from over 56,000 households, confirm that Nigeria’s poverty is not only widespread – affecting 133 million people or 63% of the population – but disproportionately concentrated in Northern states.
These figures did not appear overnight. They are the bitter harvest of decades of systemic failure by northern governors and political elites who treated governance as a personal fiefdom rather than a public trust.
Kwankwaso spoke of “neglect”, but what about the N2.8 trillion Kano State received in federal allocations during his two terms as governor? Where did it go? The schools remain dilapidated, the hospitals understaffed, and the roads he now complains about – were left to rot under his watch and those of his successors.
Kasim Afegbua’s piercing essay a few days ago, “Their North, Our North, Our Country,” captures the tragedy perfectly. The North’s leaders have weaponised poverty, turning millions of children into a permanent underclass of almajiris – uneducated, unemployed, and ripe for exploitation. These children, clad in rags, clutching chewing sticks, surviving on scraps from political praise-singers, are not an accident. They are policy choices made flesh. Kwankwaso’s much-touted mass weddings for unemployed youths now stand revealed as the cruel joke they always were – creating families without futures, marriages without means.
The parallels with Walter Rodney’s seminal “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” are too stark to ignore. Just as colonial powers extracted wealth while stifling development, northern elites have siphoned resources while neglecting human capital. The result is the same – a populace kept deliberately poor and uneducated, easier to control but impossible to develop.
Kwankwaso’s claim that the Tinubu administration is neglecting the North collapses under the slightest scrutiny.
Curiously absent from his critique was any mention of the $2 billion Kano-Maradi rail project – approved under the Buhari administration and located squarely within his own political heartland. This glaring omission undermines his credibility and reveals a troubling pattern of ethno-regional politicking.
Infrastructure development, by its very nature, most times are strategic rather than uniformly distributive. The Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, much like the Kano-Maradi rail, represents a critical investment in national economic arteries that will benefit all Nigerians through enhanced connectivity and commerce. To frame such projects through a lens of regional bias is not only disingenuous but dangerously divisive.
Kwankwaso’s unsubstantiated claims about lopsided investments fail basic scrutiny. Where is his empirical evidence? Where are his alternative proposals? Instead of contributing meaningful policy discourse, he peddles the same tired rhetoric of sectional grievance that has held Nigeria back for generations.
Is Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso not aware of the over 40 major federal projects currently transforming Northern Nigeria under President Bola Tinubu’s administration before making his reckless claim about regional neglect? Or is this simply another case of opposition politicians twisting facts for cheap political points?
The records don’t lie. While Kwankwaso was busy peddling his lopsided narrative, contractors were working round-the-clock on the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano Expressway – the largest ongoing road project in Africa. Has he not seen the massive construction work on the Sokoto-Badagry Super Highway that will connect Northwestern states to international markets?
Is the former Kano governor unaware that the Tinubu administration has committed $158.15 million to revolutionise agriculture in nine Northern states? Has he missed the commissioning of the Kano River irrigation scheme or the historic Kolmani Integrated Development Project spanning Bauchi and Gombe?
Perhaps Kwankwaso has not visited the upgraded Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital in Zaria, the new Federal Teaching Hospital in Katsina, or the 1,000 revitalised Primary Health Centers across the North. Maybe he missed the memo about the AKK Gas Pipeline that will power industries across the region or the 50MW solar plant coming up in Kaduna.
With such overwhelming evidence of federal commitment to Northern development, Kwankwaso’s claims can only be willful misinformation or shocking ignorance of his own region’s progress.
Northerners are seeing these projects transform their communities daily. They deserve leaders who recognise facts, not fabrications. If Senator Kwankwaso wants to critique the administration, he should at least base his arguments on reality rather than recycled falsehoods. The North is working – the only thing not working is Kwankwaso’s outdated playbook.
True statesmanship demands rising above such parochialism. At a time when Nigeria requires unity to confront its developmental challenges, we cannot afford leaders who trade in cheap ethnic politics. The infrastructure deficit knows no regional boundaries – neither should our solutions.
Kwankwaso would better serve the nation by offering constructive criticism backed by facts, rather than recycling inflammatory narratives. Nigeria’s progress depends on moving beyond this zero-sum mentality and recognising that national development is ultimately collective gain.
The North’s insecurity was homegrown. In 2016, banditry was virtually unknown in the Northwest. Today, it is a thriving industry. This didn’t happen by accident. When you ignore 15 million out-of-school children, you get a generation with nothing to lose. When you divert local government funds, you destroy the last mile of governance. When you spend more on political thugs than vocational training, you get kidnappers, not craftsmen.
The solution begins with the sort of honesty Uba Sani has shown. But it cannot end there. The North, like the South, needs leaders who will finally break this cycle of failure. Leaders who will dismantle the almajiri system by integrating Quranic schools into formal education. Leaders who will audit state finances and answer the simple question: where did all those federal allocations go? Leaders who will invest in agriculture, the region’s greatest untapped resource. Most of all, the North needs leaders who will demand accountability – not just from Abuja, but from themselves.
Kwankwaso’s theatrics won’t feed a single hungry child. His blame-shifting won’t educate one almajiri. The North doesn’t need more political grandstanding. It needs leaders courageous enough to own their failures – and determined enough to fix them, like President Tinubu is doing. Until that day comes, the desert will keep spreading. And no amount of carefully staged photo-ops will hold back the sands.
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