The presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) in the 2023 election, Rabiu Musa Kwakwanso, started the debate more than a week ago when he raised the allegation of Northern marginalization. Soon afterward, the issue gained traction, with Northern leaders converging on Kaduna last week to echo similar sentiments. According to leaders of the North, their area is marginalized, especially after it had given President Bola Tinubu 64 per cent of his over eight million votes to secure the presidency. Kwakwanso, the NNPP leader, whose party is in control of Kano State, had claimed in his assessment that President Tinubu was concentrating development in the Southern part of the country.
Last week, leaders of the pro-North Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) joined the former Kano governor to accuse Tinubu of leaving the North in limbo after the region had helped him to galvanize substantial votes in 2023. Chairman of the ACF, Alhaji Bashir Dalhatu, said that Tinubu had left the region to continue to wallow in insecurity, poor infrastructure, poor electricity supply, and neglect of its education and healthcare sectors.
He said: “It has to be stated, and I hope this is self-evident, that Northern Nigeria has related to Asiwaju Bola Tinubu with enthusiasm, accommodation, and goodwill. Northerners went out en masse on the 25th of February 2023 and cast their ballots for Bola Tinubu. In the event, 5.6 million out of the total 8.8 million votes he got (or 64 per cent) came from the North.
“And yet, two years into the four-year tenure of President Tinubu, the feeling among the people of the North is, to put it mildly, completely mixed.
“To our surprise, those who did not support him and hardly wished him well have emerged from nowhere and are trying to push a wedge between him and the North.”
The Minister of Works, David Umahi, and the Presidency had made quick ripostes to Kwakwanso’s offering, with Umahi insisting that comments by the former Kano governor were misleading. He also added that while the North had 52 per cent of the projects so far awarded by the Tinubu administration, the South has 48 per cent. He listed some of the projects to include the Sokoto-Badagry Superhighway, the dualisation of the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano highway, the Sokoto-Zamfara-Katsina-Kaduna Road, the Borno Ring Road, and several roads funded under the NNPCL Tax Credit Scheme.
“In the ongoing NNPCL Tax Credit roads and bridges as inherited, the North has 53% while the South has 47%, out of which the South-East has only 4% and the South-West only 5%. Yet, Mr. President has continued to fund these projects without bias,” Umahi said.
While no one can deny the rights of the ACF and Kwakwanso to criticize the administration of President Tinubu and any administration for that matter, it is imperative to emphasise that the development of a nation should slide far away from petty sentiments and dichotomies. I believe that development should wear a more enduring toga that transcends sectional sentiments and that rather than ask questions about the insecurity of the North, for instance, the question should be how secure Nigeria is as a nation.
In a piece published on June 8, 2025, on this page with the title “Minister Umahi, this scorecard is not good enough,” I had highlighted the below-par offering of Minister David Umahi as Minister of Works. I raised questions about Umahi’s failure to build the roads that are crying for reconstruction across the country and that even though he has busied himself with praising President Tinubu at every turn, his antics may not help the president if he cannot deliver any tangible project even in the president’s backyard in the South-West. I hinted that the man he has been singing his praise may not have anything to buga with in his home region in the next general election if the trend continued. Responses to that piece came from across the country. Though I am yet to publish them, some of the replies, however, created the impression that I was deliberately particular about South-West roads. All the same, the replies affirmed the fact that the Ministry of Works has indeed been sleeping on duty. I will take two of them.
A reader by the name Isha Michael said in his response that I failed to mention the bad roads in the North, and he listed some of them spread across the North-West and North-Central to include the Abuja-Suleja-Minna Road; Lambata-Lapai-Agaie-Bida Road; Mokwa-Jebba-Bode Saadu Road; Igbetti-Kishi-Oko-Oba-Ilorin Road; Minna-Zungeru-Tegina-Mariga Road; Kotangora-Yauri-Jega-Sokoto Road; Kotangora-Makera Road, and Tegina-Makera-Bokani-Mokwa Road.
While I will insist that the purpose of the June 8 article was not to list out the roads seeking reconstruction in the South-West, another reader from the North-East named Iliya H.B, responded by saying: “A nice piece, even though you only captured Southern parts. We think the South has benefited more on roads than the North because right from Jonathan, Buhari to Tinubu, we would always hear Fashola, etc., mentioning that FEC has approved so, so hundreds of billions of Naira for the Lagos-Ibadan Road, Ibadan-Ogbomosho, Ilesha-Akure, Enugu- Calabar etc. But from this your lamentation, I now know that it’s not yet uhuru for the South, too. And for the N15 trillion Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road, for God’s sake, how can you commit a whopping sum for a single project like that when there are many others, probably of more value, crying for attention across the country? What is so special about that road? Abi na de mammy waters around that axis helped the president to win the election…?”
As much as organisations like the ACF and politicians like Kwakwanso are entitled to their opinions on perceived governmental failures, I believe that statesmanship should not be lost even amid hot exchanges. Even as they are free to ask questions of the president, one would also want to ask, how much of queries have they raised for the sons of the North who are saddled with one responsibility or the other in the administration? The ministers have much to do about service delivery, and we must ask them questions. A son of the North is saddled with the responsibility of midwifing the Livestock Ministry. Why is it that the silence from the ministry has been louder than its actions? The Ministry of Defence has two ministers of Northern origin. The Minister of Agriculture is also from the North. What is the level of service delivery by these officers? I think these are the questions the North should be putting forward, rather than embarking on the marginalization sing-song. As shown by the June 8 piece featured on this page and the two responses, the whole of Nigeria is entitled to cry marginalization, if we go by the performance of the Ministry of Works alone. But the broader question I believe the leaders should be asking is: Is democracy working for Nigeria? If it is not working as much as we want, how do we fix the broken sides? These would truly benefit the entire nation, rather than the divisive issues of North versus South. I believe that elders like Kwakwanso and ACF leaders should be telling the administration where it has fallen short in terms of development.
Afterall, if parts of the North are in good shape, and the South is left out, does that make Nigeria a developed nation? And if parts of the South are developed without a corresponding growth in the North, the country would remain bogged down as an underdeveloped enclave. What is important in a clime like Nigeria is to consciously de-emphasise segregation where the language of development is required. Can we check the impacts of government, governance, and service delivery? Such concerns will situate the Northern agitation better.
But in real terms, can we say that President Tinubu has marginalized the North, especially going by the analysis presented by the ACF? I don’t think so. If there is insecurity in the North, it is also in the South. If there are bad roads in the North, they are also in the South. That means that the Northern leaders need to focus on the holistic development of the Nigerian space. The Minister of Works, Umahi, had in his response to Kwakwanso said that the NNPCL Tax Credit roads and bridges inherited from the late President Muhammadu Buhari have 53% of the projects located in the North and 47 per cent in the South. Is this the type of lopsidedness the ACF and Northern leaders would favour? Rather than encourage the North/South dichotomy, I think our elders should insist that the government must do what is right for all sections of the country without bias.
(Published by the Sunday Tribune, August 3, 2025).
