“In politics, memories are sometimes very short, and sometimes very long”—Douglas Reed In my previous articles, “The North and the Burden of Being” and “The Sociology of the Northern Question in Nigeria” both of which were published in this column, I raised the issues surrounding the place of the North in national discourses such as the […]

“The experience of past faults, which may sometimes correct the mature age of an individual, is seldom profitable to the successive generations of mankind”—   Edward Gibbon It is undeniable that episodic currents of social, economic, and political challenges are bufetting the Northern region of Nigeria today much more than the Southern parts of the country, which […]

“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 […]

“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 […]

“There is no doubting the fact that the era of small things and small people has finally dawned upon us”–   John Buchan Most discussions of the “National Question” invariably and instinctively boil down to one thing only – the “Northern Question”. This was particularly evident in the deliberations of the 2014 National Conference and most utterances […]