Northern Nigeria’s political and intellectual establishment has delivered one of its bluntest public indictments of the region’s condition in years, with senior figures acknowledging that decades of diagnosis, political rhetoric and fragmented interventions have failed to halt a deterioration marked by insecurity, poverty, educational exclusion and the erosion of public trust.<\/p>\n
The unusually candid assessment emerged from the\u00a03rd Late General Hassan Usman Katsina Memorial Conference, held on July 25 at Arewa House in Kaduna under the theme\u00a0\u201cFrom Sacrifice to Strategy: Rekindling General Hassan Usman Katsina’s Vision for a Prosperous Northern Nigeria.\u201d<\/p>\n
The conference brought together political figures, traditional leaders, academics, security officials and civil-society actors. Former Vice-Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University and Northern Elders Forum chairman\u00a0Prof. Ango Abdullahi, political economist\u00a0Dr. Usman Bugaje, former military officer\u00a0Maj. Hamza Al-Mustapha, and representatives of President Bola Tinubu all contributed to an unusually bleak assessment of the region.<\/p>\n
The message was strikingly different from the conventional language of development conferences.<\/p>\n
The North, several speakers effectively said, already knows what is wrong. The problem is that it has repeatedly failed to act.<\/p>\n