VIRTUALLY all private owned media houses, both print and electronic, with national coverage are owned by Southerners.The Guardian,Vanguard,ThisDay,Independent Daily, Ait, Channels, Silverbird television stations, to mention but a few, are owned by people from Niger Delta, particularly Delta and Edo states that were hitherto part of South West Nigeria under  Awolowo’s exemplary leadership.

These visionary policies did not convert the large population of Muslims in the then Western Nigeria to Christians, yet they benefited from the value addition which these policies introduced to the region.

In contrast, the Northern region did everything it could to keep Western education at bay, an educational system which Professor Aminu acknowledged was introduced by missionaries with their “concomitant proselytising activities” which “rendered them unacceptable in the Muslim North”.

The results are stark and sometimes grim. A recent survey in Lagos found that, eight out of every 10 “Okada” riders in Lagos are from the North; these were the same children or youths who were indoctrinated years ago to believe that Western education is “Haram”. Today they are fighting for their survival in the market-place of Western education, where the outcome for those with limited Western education is Hobbesian.

The Chinese officially are mostly  not keen on religion; the Russians for many years proscribed religion from official matters, yet they were far sighted enough to separate the wheat from the chaff- meaning that taking what is useful out of Western education need not change your religious orientation.

This social dilemma and the cultural disempowerment of women from the working place, amongst other factors, have contributed to the underdevelopment of many parts of the North. Yet, will Mallam Lamido and his ilk accept this? No!

They will rather blame the 13% allocated to states from where 100% of the oil and gas revenue was generated.For the same reason, some Northern elites like Lamido do not see the danger that a religious sect poses to the entire developmental agenda of the North when it embarks on a policy of fighting the same uphill battle against Western education, which is vastly responsible for under development of the human capital of many states in the North.

This needless cultural battle, is self-defeating. For instance, the first teacher-training institute in the North, the nursery of teachers who will teach others was established in 1922, but by 1953,  three decades and one year later, it had only enrolled 1000 students.

Further still, after 38 years at the centre of power in Nigeria, it only took, the government of Goodluck Jonathan to bring Federal universities to some Northern states, and the government of Obasanjo, another Southerner to liberalize  the establishment of private universities.

But even with these expansions, did the Northern elites like Mallam Lamido put their money where their mouth is by investing in education for the benefit of Northern youths and children to expand their future opportunities like Abubakar Atiku and a few others have done? No! They will rather blame the 13% allocation to oil producing states and find other nebulous reasons.

And what will be the outcome? Ogun State, the home of Awolowo who used education to put the spirit of industry and possibility in every Yoruba child without 13% oil allocation, where its people know the value of such foundations, and where most of its prominent citizens have Muslims for several generations in their families, has more universities than the total number of universities in the North West and North East of Nigeria combined.

Fifteen years from now, when the products of these universities will be on the board of global business empires, the Boko Haram graduates may still be making vernacular videos about abating the use of Western education in the North, while the oil producing states will be blamed by Mallam Lamido and his co-travelers for the North’s underdevelopment.

Dr. ANTHONY MUDIAGA, a medical practitionner, wrote from Abuja.