“To a mind capable of reflection, such leading facts convey more instruction, than a tedious detail of subordinate circumstances”–   Edward Gibbon

The challenges, threats, risks and dangers that every Nigerian faces or experiences today are not categorised according to their emphatic relationships with the tribe, ethnic group, religious belief, region of origin, state or local government areas that we belong to. Neither do these negative forces respect our economic classes, political persuasions or even gender and age classifications. They are generic in nature and they afflict each and everyone of us regardless of our individual or group distinctions and differences.

Moreoever, crisis such as environmental disasters and climate change, insecurity and egregious violence, indiscriminate criminality, banditry, kidnapping, terrorism, bewildering road accidents and mishaps, pandemics and outbreak of diseases, corruption that has become epidemic and a cankerworm in our country, and many other issues that confront us today, must be seen from a national perspective and context, rather than from the narrow and unhelpful regional or sectional lenses.

In dealing with the “Northern Question” in Nigeria, the “tedious detail of subordinate circumstances” must be jettisoned in favour of concrete actions that are framed around policy and governance strategies, to address the existential issues that have been rightly or wrongly prescribed to that region, and which have become part of the general national discourse regarding the future of this country. The sociology of the discourse about the North must necessarily begin by admitting the critical importance of combatting poverty in the region and the high levels of income disparity and limited access to opportunities, particularly in the areas of education and healthcare.

This realisation becomes more urgent considering the indeterminate and generally unsatisfactory state of the implementation of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, in the region, which are the key markers of social transformation established by the world body in 2015. The reformation of the Almajiri system which is alleged to have created mass poverty, apathy towards Western education and social inequality among the youth of the region, has not been addressed systematically as a policy matter in order to get at its root to make it a meritorious endeavour rather than a controversial matter as it seems today. The glaring issue of lack of adequate infrastructure in the North, such as roads, electricity, water supply, proper urban planning and so forth, that have grossly hindered the region’s economic development, is still being approached from the point of view of whether the North deserves them or not. 

The state of insecurity in the region would naturally call for a concerted national effort towards rescuing the people and the region from the deadly clutches of armed gangs, kidnappers, criminal cartels, terrorists and other sundry negative forces. The entrenchment of this state of affairs and such actors have left the region bereft of hope of a speedy solution which effectively undermines confidence in future prospects of meaningful development and the realisation of both individual and group aspirations across the wide and vast vistas of the region. The resolution or amelioration of this situation should call for a concerted national action rather than exultation and self-exoneration by other parts of the country.

The discourse on the phenomena of ethnic and religious tensions and rivalries have now extended beyond the borders of Nigeria and have enmeshed the country in the wider forays of diplomatic maneuvering to bring pressure to bear on Nigeria. The recent declaration by the United States government that it would impose sanctions on Nigeria for the alleged persecution and systematic killings of Christians naturally dovetails with the psychology and sociology of national rivalries and contests. It is necessary to misrepresent Nigeria by pointing to the spectre of the “North” in order to get automatic attention and elicit actions towards discomfiting the country and its government. The manipulation of ethnicity and religion have long served the cause of certain elements in the larger determination of the “National Question” in Nigeria.

This crusade and orchestrated campaign against Nigeria under a Muslim President and Vice-President has been carried to new vistas in far-right publications in America especially, that are now characterising the situation as an ominous moment of persecution and genocide against people of the Christian faith. The fact that over a dozen Muslims from the North can be killed and their bodies set ablaze in a predominantly Christian part of Southern Nigeria in Uromi, does not warrant the opprobrium and indignation of the “international community” because of who the victims were and where they came from. 

There are no tendencies as great or as inconsequential as those that dramatically alter the perceptions of people positively or negatively based on peremptory judgement of their fellow citizens from the lenses of prejudice and inherited biases. This seems to be the unfortunate lot of the North in the consideration of various elements of the national discourse in Nigeria around privileges of citizenship and other prerogatives that have been conferred by the Constitution and laws of the country. Regardless of the situation or the circumstance, an injurious infusion of sentiments against the North must invariably become apparent when issues of national import are discussed and directions are sought towards which to move our country. 

Governance under such circumstances becomes a one-way affair that blindly treads the path of prejudice and uncompromising alienation of one section in favour of the others. This, in turn, breeds mistrust and antagonism that linger even beyond the term of the particular dispensation, to form a crust on the fossilized series of discontents that have affected our country for so long, and to which no effective remedies are seen to be offered or available. The paroxysm of despair will continue to animate the country until such a time when we begin to see issues from the perspectives of collective interests and a common purpose, rather than distancing and alienation from each other on grounds of manufactured discontents and fabricated justifications of ignoble parentage and antecedents.