Kidnap victims
By Mohammed Bello Doka
When you sell your peace and freedom for noodles and rice, do not complain when no one takes you serious.
In the last 24 months, after realising that the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not interested in addressing the mounting challenges of insecurity, poverty, and illiteracy in the North, I have written dozens of articles in that regard.
Each piece was a cry, a warning, a desperate attempt to wake a sleeping giant. But in return, the most denigrating, insulting abuses and threats came mainly from fellow Northerners.
These were people who thought they were about to start benefiting from the government, those already in the government, or even those who assumed they were close to power when, in reality, they are all living in self-delusion.
The most vicious attacks came from those who were promised one ticket or another during the primaries. Some are the data boys of those same political jobbers.
About ninety-seven percent of them were disappointed, lied to, and eventually cut off from the governing All Progressives Congress.
Yet, they continue to defend a system that chewed them up and spat them out. Over ninety percent of our business partners were threatened to stop patronizing us.
We were isolated, rejected, and boycotted. They thought that by cutting off our oxygen, they would force us to stop citing the numbers. But the numbers do not lie, and neither do the graves.
The philosopher George Santayana once warned, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. The North is living this tragedy in real time. Consider the facts.
According to the 2025 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index, over half of the residents in Kebbi, Jigawa, Sokoto, and Bauchi states are living in severe poverty, with Kebbi at 52.7 percent, Jigawa at 52.0 percent, Sokoto at 51.4 percent, and Bauchi at 50.8 percent.
The World Bank further confirms that the average poverty rate in the North East stands at 71.9 percent, while the North West follows closely at 64.8 percent.
In Zamfara, 44.7 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, and in Katsina, 35.2 percent. These are not abstractions. These are human beings, your neighbors, your relatives, your children.
The blood price of this neglect is staggering. In Kaduna State, a community in Gidan Waya was forced to sell over three thousand bags of maize to raise forty million naira as ransom for thirteen kidnapped kinsmen. Despite paying the full amount, the victims have not been released.
One elder recalled, When the trailers came to load the maize, everyone in the community was crying. That is the sound of a people eating their own future to buy a momentary peace that never comes. Across the North, bandits operate with impunity.
In Zamfara, gunmen invaded Tashar Katuru in Jangebe community, abducting scores of villagers, mostly women and children, and setting shops ablaze in an operation that lasted over two hours without effective confrontation from security forces.
In Katsina, police officers are being ambushed and killed regularly, with two officers, Sergeant Bilyaminu Babangida and PC Abdulaziz Musa, losing their lives in a single attack in Musawa Local Government Area .
The educational catastrophe is equally damning. According to UNICEF, only thirty percent of school-age children in the North attend formal school, meaning seven out of every ten are out of the classroom.
Nationally, over twenty million children are out of school, the highest in the world, with the North bearing the heaviest burden. Over 10.2 million primary-age and 8.1 million junior-secondary-age children are out of school across the region.
The United Nations Children’s Fund has warned that poverty, insecurity, and harmful social norms are undermining learning outcomes, with long-term consequences for peace and development. As one UNICEF official stated, When you educate a child, you uplift a family.
When you educate a girl, you strengthen a community. And when you invest in education, you secure peace and development for generations. The North is doing none of this.
The political class is complicit in this tragedy. Northern governors who sing the mandate song, On your mandate, Bola, on your mandate, continue to stand firmly behind President Tinubu.
They collect billions from the Federation Account while their people are slaughtered and kidnapped.
According to the Progressive Governors’ Forum, northern governors are actively positioning themselves as central stabilizers of the party’s continuity agenda ahead of 2027.
Former Katsina State Governor Aminu Masari chairs the Central Coordination Committee for the APC’s National Convention. Yobe State Governor Mai Mala Buni serves as secretary overseeing administrative coordination.
Niger State Governor Mohammed Bago heads the Digital and New Media Sub-Committee. These are the men who preside over states where bandits operate with terrifying impunity, where schools are closed, where pregnant women are killed, where children are abducted in broad daylight.
Yet, it is this same set of people that wants President Tinubu to take them seriously, just as he took the Oyo incident seriously. The hypocrisy is staggering.
In Zamfara and Katsina, over eighty percent of the most important people in the states, traditional rulers, businessmen, and politicians, continue to stand on his mandate and even promise him a successful ride in the 2027 election.
These are the same people who are being killed, maimed, raped, and set ablaze in mosques. Not only do they endorse the man who ignores their suffering, but they attack everyone who dares to speak the truth. They have become the enablers of their own destruction.
The psychologist Erich Fromm wrote, The most important form of submission is the submission to the stronger power, the group, or the leader.
The individual gives up his own strength and feels protected by the power of the leader, which he now experiences as his own. This is the psychology of the Northern elite.
They have surrendered their agency, their dignity, and their people to a leader who holds them in contempt, believing that by clinging to his shadow, they will somehow be shielded from the storm. But the storm has already arrived.
What of the common people who bear the brunt of this failure? They are the ones who line up for cups of rice and packs of noodles, distributed by the very political elite who refuse to protect them.
They are the ones whose children are hawking on the streets instead of sitting in classrooms. They are the ones who sleep with one eye open, listening for the sound of gunshots in the night.
They are the ones who sell their stored grains, their future harvests, to pay ransoms for relatives who may never return. And then they are told to be grateful. They are told to sing the mandate song. They are told that their suffering is the price of democracy.
The psychologist Abraham Maslow placed safety as the second most fundamental human need, after only physiological survival.
When a government fails to provide safety, it forfeits its legitimacy.
The North has no safety. It has no schools. It has no jobs. It has no future. And yet, the chorus of denial continues.
The Northern elite stand on the president’s mandate while their constituents lie in graves. They have sold their people’s peace and freedom for noodles and rice, for appointments, for the illusion of relevance.
The ancient philosopher Cicero asked, How long, O Catiline, will you abuse our patience?
The question today is directed at the Northern political class: How long will you abuse the patience of your own people? How many more children must be kidnapped before you stop singing?
How many more pregnant women must be slaughtered before you see that the man you serve does not serve you?
So apparently, the North has made its choice. The choice is not forced upon them by geography or fate.
It is a choice made daily by governors who refuse to demand accountability, by businessmen who fund political campaigns instead of community security, by religious leaders who whisper in palaces instead of crying in the wilderness, and by ordinary people who accept cups of rice as compensation for their stolen security.
What is the way out? The solution is brutal in its simplicity. The North must stop complaining if it refuses to change. But if there is still a will to survive, then action is required.
First, the people must demand that their governors either secure their states or resign. No more press releases. No more photo opportunities. Security or nothing.
Second, the business class must divert their resources from political patronage to community defense and education.
Third, the common people must learn that a cup of rice is not worth the dignity of a child. Reject the handouts that buy your silence.
Fourth, Northern voters must register in their millions and vote as a bloc for any candidate who presents a concrete security and education plan, regardless of party affiliation.
Fifth, traditional and religious leaders must issue a united ultimatum to the federal government: secure the North or lose the mandate.
As the philosopher Edmund Burke said, The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. The North has done nothing for too long. The bed has been laid. The choice is simple: lie in it quietly and perish, or rise from it and rebuild.
