The Northern Media Forum has demanded action against extreme poverty and recurring insecurity in the region.
The forum, quoting the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), said the North has 86 million people – representing 65 per cent – out of the 113 million Nigerians living with poverty.
It said the people in the region live a miserable life such that they “cook with dung, wood or charcoal rather than clean energy and where deprivations also exist in sanitation, healthcare, food insecurity and housing.”
In an Advisories In Respect of the 2023 Election, signed by the forum’s Chairman, Dan Agbese and Secretary, Zainab Sulieman Okino, they observed that the higher percentage of the people of the region – 72 percent live in the rural areas as against 42 per cent in the urban centers.
“One of the direct consequences of the high level of poverty especially in the North is equally the high level of insecurity in the region. From Boko Haram insurgency to farmer-header crisis to banditry and kidnap for ransom, the North is now a massive killing field. This is not surprising. The fact of poverty makes unemployed youth recruitment assets for criminal gangs, whether as insurgents or as bandits,” the Forum said.
The forum expressed serious worry that insecurity was not only festering for the past 13 years but growing, adding that even with the election of the APC government of Muhammadu Buhari hoping to quell it, “insecurity has grown wings; it now manifests in many folds.”
One area they identified to have suffered due to insecurity in the North was education. Specifically, it observed that northern children’s educations have suffered.
“In the North, education of children and teens is in jeopardy. From train hijack to abductions of school children, the halt in education is real.
“For instance, in 2020, 300 boys were taken from Kankara Science Secondary School, Kankara Katsina state; in May 2021 and 130 Islamiyya pupils abducted from Salihu Tanko Islamiyya School in Tegina, Niger state. “
“In May 2021, 126 students were herded out of Bethel Baptist High School, Damishi, Kaduna state. In June 2021, 112 girls were kidnapped from FGC Birnin Yauri, Kebbi state even as undergraduate students of Greenfield University, Kaduna were affected and many more isolated cases recorded here and there.
“Some of the abducted girls now have kids for bandits in the bush and parents now hold back on the education of their wards, especially the girl-child. This obviously has compounded an already bad situation of our out-of-school,” the Forum said.
The Editors also observed the bandits, terrorists and kidnappers have seized the political space in the north, as according to them, they criminal now dictate to politicians where to take their campaigns to.
According to them,“this is dangerous and alarming. If the trend persists, their (bandits) indulgence will be a fait accompli, and there might be no end in sight for banditry, if they are already providing protection for the political class.
“This is unacceptable. Anybody worth his salt, seeking political office must seek to end banditry and not cut deals with them. Banditry has left families traumatised and only a declarative statement on how to end it should earn office seekers votes. We enjoin voters to be aware of the ugly trend of some politicians in cahoots with bandits.
“The North is not just the headquarters of banditry, it is home to millions of IDPs who became victims of insurgency, banditry and herder-Fulani clashes. They lost their homes and means of livelihood too.”
The Forum further observed that the huge IPD situation in the north could prevent them from voting in the 2023 general elections, and urged security agencies to protect the IDPs just as it told the INEC to make adequate arrangemet for the IDPs to vote who they want to rule them.
The Editors suggested solutions to assuage the situation in the North by calling for realistic programmes of action that would revive the economy and provide jobs for the over 30 million youths in the region.
They said “What the North in particular needs this time is concrete plan of action that has the capacity to transform, reform and change the narratives of destitution, poverty, anger and hunger, desolation, tragedies. We want the North in particular and Nigeria in general reengineered for good.
“Nigerians are desirous of free, fair and credible elections come 2023. Fortunately for us, the Electoral Law 2022 has made the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), Electronic Transmission of Results to INEC portal (IReV) and other technological innovations an integral part of our election. From all indications and its practical demonstration in Anambra, Ekiti and Osun states, these two (BVAS and IReV) have ensured that our elections are increasingly rig-proof.
“This gives hope to Nigerians that their votes will count. We therefore urge voters to take advantage of the opportunity offered by INEC’s technologies to vote. In the near future, even the monetisation of votes will no longer be relevant.”
