Maybe if we could bridge the economic gap between northern and southern Nigeria it would go a long way to reducing ethnic mistrust. I think the Northern States Governors Forum can help with this

Ayo Akinfe

[1] On February 4, 1931, at the beginning of the Soviet Union’s rapid industrialisation campaign, Joseph Stalin told the the First All Union Conference of Leading Personnel of Socialist Industry: “We are 50 to 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in 10 years. I think our Northern State Governors Forum (NSGF) is facing a similar challenge

[2] Ask yourselves how much ethnic mistrust will disappear across the country if over the next 10 years we achieve socio-economic parity between northern and southern Nigeria

[3] For starters, the NSGF needs to mandate all its governors to dedicate a minimum of 40% of their state budgets to education annually. Nigeria’s 19 northern states need to desperately catch up in terms of literacy levels, vocational skills, number of graduates, etc

[4] Every northern state must pair with a sister state in southern Nigeria and make sure they keep apace when it comes to number of schools, hospital beds, kilometres of tarred roads, etc. These indices should be monitored by an independent body

[5] Every northern state must set itself a minimum target of attracting $1bn in foreign direct investment annually

[6] Every northern state must scrap spending on religious events like pilgrimages, mass marriages, building mosques, etc and spend that money on opening technical vocational colleges. Nigeria is not a theocracy. Every local government area must have at least one technical vocational college

[7] Every local government area must have at least one food processing plant that processes crops like groundnuts, millet, sorghum, gum arabic, etc. State governors must be compelled by law to attract private investiors

[8] Every state must have a de-indoctrination centre where misguided and misled youths are offered therapy, counselling and vocational training. These centres will obviously serve as disarmament facilities too

[9] Every state must set itself a 10-year deadline by which time it will become economically self-reliant. The idea is that after 10 years, every state in northern Nigeria will withdraw from the federal allocation programme

[10] Each governor is legally obliged to create a minimum of 10,000 jobs a month. A failure to do so for two successive months will trigger automatic impeachment proceedings

ayoakinfe@gmail.com