Northern Governors on the spot, by Hakeem Baba-Ahmed

“If the owner of the land leads you, you cannot get lost”— African proverb.

Perhaps it was inevitable, but the tide of negative public opinion on Northern Governors has been rising at a pace that should worry them. The reality is that more articulate and influential voices are being raised against their performance and commitment to the public interest. It is not enough to blame this escalation on negative perception and hostility on characteristic low ratings of elected leaders for those in their first terms.

For others who have been in office for six years, the verdict is harsher and older. In all, it is difficult to see a popular hero among Northern Governors, although there are a few who have demonstrated fairly good image- management and populist posturing. With the 2027 elections virtually upon us, Northern Governors should worry. Those in their first terms would want a second. Those in second terms would wish to access the popular destination of Governors- the Senate – and hope the next national leadership is from their party, so they do not lose sleep over governance records.

The peak, at least at this stage, in the bashing of Northern Governors could be the trigger endorsement of President Bola Tinubu by North-West Governors as sole party candidate and eventual next President in 2027. It is possible that former APC National Chairman, Abdullahi Ganduje, had a hand in it; but in a region being swamped by unprecedented levels of poverty and insecurity, it will not take a harsh critic to slam a label of poor politics at the Governors for a move that was at best insensitive, and at worst utterly contemptuous of opinions of citizens. It did not help their case that the endorsement of President Tinubu was comprehensive enough to include the Governors themselves and all others holding elected positions, with two years to go to elections. Events at the second attempt at serial blanket endorsements in Gombe demonstrated how risky the business of ignoring popular or particular interests is. Somehow, Gombe took the sting out of other endorsements, such that they passed virtually unnoticed.

The next major milestone in the rise of Northern Governors to the rarified airs of infamy could be the carefully-crafted engagement between President Tinubu’s Northern faces in his administration and select Northerners at Arewa House in Kaduna a few weeks ago. To be fair, the engagement was planned to slow the widening gulf between the Tinubu administration and Northerners. But it exposed a damaging collateral damage which Northern Governors now bear, quite possibly without realising it. A slightly higher  political antenna would have advised that Northern Governors paid more than a casual interest at an event that was to discuss the state of the North under an APC presidency and 13 Governors.

Three of such Governors attended that governance inquest: the Chair of Nigerian Governors’ Forum from Kwara State sat through the proceedings; the Governor of Gombe State, and Chair, Northern Governors’ Forum, spoke well of achievements of the Tinubu administration in the North, and the Governor of Kaduna State spoke well of his achievements as Governor of Kaduna State. Tinubu’s team made an effort to make the case that the President is being grossly misunderstood by a region crawling on its belly under the burdens of  poverty, insecurity, and neglect. The question regarding who is to be understood as the architect of the current state of the North began to seek out Buhari’s legacy, Tinubu’s insensitivity,  Northern Governors and a non- political elite that has betrayed an invaluable legacy.

After Kaduna, voices began to rise. Northerners blame Tinubu for the current levels of insecurity; for economic policies that make life very difficult and for running an administration without even pretenses of respect for the federal character in the utilization of national assets and appointments. While there is some evidence for all these, these other voices began to insist that it is both wrong and a waste of time to blame Tinubu alone. They insist that the real culprit is the North itself, or, more specifically, the absence of the type of leadership the North requires at this stage to take up its grievances of unfair treatment and mobilize its latent strength to reduce its multiple deficits in Nigeria. The case is being made that the North has many liabilities.

These include elected leaders such as Governors who, in addition to their legion of sins, insist on pocketing local government funds in defiance of the Constitution; legislators who surrender their awesome powers to the President and Governors; Ministers and other senior officials in federal and state governments who do not add any value to the state of the North, traditional rulers who have lost their historical relevance and potency to crippling political partisanship, clergy which has been bought over by politicians, and an alarming size of young population without any preparation for living responsible, productive lives. Groups of elderly elite scattered in ineffective groups who are quick to release media statements in defence of Northern interests also come in for some scathing criticism for abandoning the North when it matters most, or sit on the fence to please partisan interests at critical moments.

Of all the long list of liabilities which the North is supposed to bear, none is more exposed than its 19 Governors. This set is on record for receiving vastly improved amounts of allocations from the federation account, being directly the result of the removal of subsidy which is supposed to be responsible for the misery of Nigerians. Ordinarily, you would think they would invest it in mitigating crushing poverty, including rising  cases of malnutrition, supporting the fight against sundry violent criminals, building social and economic infrastructure such as schools and hospitals, and empowering young people with skills and start-up capital. Their critics say they do very little of this. Instead, they sit on  massive security votes, travel in very long convoys, buy up estates in Nigeria and overseas, and operate with the lowest levels of sensitivity and empathy for the population. APC Governors bear Tinubu’s cross, in addition, because they cannot even murmur his limitations. Non-APC Governors look and behave uncannily like APC Governors, except for their party flags.

Northern Governors do have many limitations, but none more prominent than their failure to narrate their sides of a sad Northern story. For politicians with their backs against the wall, their failure to stop or explain failures in security or limitations to their abilities  to mitigate levels of poverty, or even publicize the small droplets of achievements on an angry and skeptical population is astounding. Critics who are disposed to including useful advice in the bundle of criticism against Northern Governors see some useful purpose in a collaboration between the political and other shades of Northern elite to chart a course that could provide some relief to Northerners in the short term, and a re-engineering of the North in the long term. Much of the North is desperate and angry. Their Governors can reduce the sorry circumstances under which citizens live.

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