...Northerners are not lazy people. They may even be the strongest in Nigeria given the strenuous work most of them do. Northerners are not less creative: Sokoto-born Jelani Aliyu of GM Motors in the USA has wowed the world with his car designs; Gombe-born Helon Habila won the 2001 Caine Prize. Northerners are not less enterprising; that the richest man in Africa and the Black race is a Northerner should tell us something. Northerners are not less intelligent; the academic exploits of Beatrice Hamza-Bassey at the University of Maiduguri and Harvard University bear testimonies to this. The problem of the North is not in the individual, but in the environment created by the elders that think only of themselves and immediate families. There needs to emerge a group of young intellectuals who can call the bluff of the South on issues like quota system, resource control, regional autonomy, and the like. This group needs to tell the Northern elders to stop insulting the North and portraying Northerners in a bad light. It is only when the North starts telling the South bluntly that it can survive and excel without the South and its much touted oil that the Northern renaissance will have started. This is the missionary work the likes of el-Rufai and Ribadu should take upon themselves to salvage... ...Azuka Onwuka
Posted on: Fri, 30 May 2014 09:05:34 +0000
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