“Facts are the most eloquent form of apologetics“–    John Buchan

Northern Nigeria is quite a large 

expanse of land comprising of 19 states and the federal capital territory, thus forming over two-thirds of the country’s land mass. Perhaps this singular fact is the greatest drawback of the North, for which residual resentment and antagonism are being demonstrated and its breakup into pieces is always an item on the agenda of the “National Question” debates. It has all the pleasant endowments of nature like arable land, rivers and lakes, a variety of useful minerals, hills and valleys, forests and grasslands and semi-desert and scrublands. It also has an abundant human resource that is one huge asset that has not been prudently cultivated and tapped into, to bring out the potentials of the region. Its animal resources are beyond comparison and can be supportive of the regeneration of the entire region’s economy. Most important of all, it is a market unto itself if properly organised, empowered and patronised.

There are deliberately laid out plans to address regional disparities in development in Nigeria. Over the years, several policies have indeed been introduced but they have not been particularly geared towards addressing disparities. Rather, such policies as the federal character principle and the so-called “zoning programmes” have more of a political intent behind them than to provide a panacea to development deficit in one region or the other. The disparities in Nigeria between the North and the South are not really peculiar. Such dichotomies also exist between town and country for instance, and also between agricultural and industrial regions in many countries. The regional dichotomy in Italy actually propelled Antonio Gramsci to pen his famous treatise, “The Southern Question” in respect of the disparities in development between that country’s industrial north and the largely agricultural south.

Such disparities are also found in the United States of America even today between the state of California and others, and between its southern and the northeastern states. The same marginalisation and disparities of opportunities can be found in Spain, England, France, Germany and virtually every country of the world. In England, I was recently informed that you could still do better in terms of prosperity if you had a Norman name and heritage, rather than an Anglo-Saxon ancestry, a situation that began in the year 1066 and continues to this day! China’s eastern cities and provinces enjoyed the most dramatic and sustained development in the country’s history, while its western zones were left behind in the country’s economic boom. Others like Malaysia, Brazil, India, etc., are also experiencing similar disparities in their social and economic development occasioned by different historical and objective factors.

It is, therefore, not a unique phenomenon that affects Nigeria alone, but a common problem that is engendered by the uneven and unequal processes of the accumulation of capital and the development of the modes of production of different countries and societies at different epochs. Also, such conditions are brought about by the spread and intensity of trade, commodity production, division of labour and the differentiated rates of industrialisation in a given country. The idea that the North is “lagging” behind the South must, therefore, be placed in its proper context in terms of the development of their respective modes or forces of production, the rate of advancement and infiltration of finance and industrial capital into the regions, the rate of commodities production, the application of science to industry and agriculture, as well as the differentiation and specialisation in the division of labour in commercial activities.

Access to capital, in particular, created the wide chasm that exists today between the South and the North, where the former has the preponderant advantage in recent years in such areas as industrial production and manufacturing, thereby contributing to its superior economic position while reducing the latter to the role of furnishing of markets, agricultural products and raw materials only. This situation further created disparities in income levels, tax revenues, market diversification and specialisation, attraction of foreign direct investment as well as the outlooks of their respective peoples toward the concept of modernity and all its trappings. It is, therefore, not enough or satisfactory to simply take a cursory look at the two regions and make an oracular declaration about the “progress” of one and the “backwardness” of the other. Rather, it is mandatory and indeed rational, to inquire into this state of affairs and provide an acceptable explanation for the situation if this phenomenon presents an existential challenge for the country.

The idea of developing the North as a region evolved from the policy of the regional government during the First Republic. The establishment of the New Nigeria Development Company, NNDC, in 1957, was supposed to redirect and invigorate the commercial and industrial development of the Northern region through facilitating private sector initiatives. The idea was that NNDC will sell its own stakes in an enterprise after its gestation and then start another venture, thereby creating cascading or revolving opportunities for businesses to develop and grow in the region.

Venture capital style of arrangement was the philosophy behind the setting up of NNDC. It continued along this line into the 1980s when things became blurred and its mission was diverted into other areas that were not designed to provide it with the sustenance that was needed to make it viable. NNDC is now being reconfigured to have public interest shares apart from the controlling shares of the 19 Northern states. It is this arrangement that should now merit attention and faithful commitment rather than the unhelpful and unnecessary fixation on the region’s trials and tribulations from the perspectives of regional rivalries and contests. The revitalisation or revival of the North’s banking interests should also be a focus of this endeavour at regeneration of the region’s make-up and fortune.