The nationwide protest designed to draw the attention of the government to hunger in the land kicked off on August 1 as planned by the organizers. Except states in the South East where it was business as usual and there was no protest of any sort, protesters took to the streets in other major cities in the country.
But while the protest was reasonably peaceful in the southern part of the country, the story was different in the north from the first day of the protest.
While the protesters in the south were armed with placards denouncing the policies of the government that brought about hardship in the country and marching peacefully on the streets, their counterparts in the north were armed with sticks and other weapons, destroying private and public facilities, looting shops and causing mayhem. The carnage and destruction by the protesters in the north were so massive that curfew was declared in no fewer than five states while scores of protesters also lost their lives.
Northern leaders who spoke on why the national protest assumed a violent dimension in the north were unanimous in their assessment. The northern leaders warned that the millions of young people in northern Nigeria who were being used to cause violence are a time bomb not just for the north but the whole country and the earlier something is done about the issues concerning the north the better for the country.
Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna State, who went round the state capital to assess the level of destruction said most of the children in the north who took part in the protest were uneducated and they were underage.
According to him, “because of the fact that 65 per cent of the people in the north are very poor, it was therefore very easy for some elements who orchestrated and sponsored the protest to misinform, misguide and recruit most of these gullible children.
The sponsors of these violent protests worked on the psychology of the children and made them believe that since our people in northern Nigeria are very close to our neighbouring countries like Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, what happened in those countries can also happen in Nigeria. So, this protest has nothing to do with bad government or hunger”.
Also speaking on why the protest in the north was violent unlike in the south where it was very peaceful, Senator Shehu Sani, in an interview on Channels television programme, Politics Today, said
“The fundamental difference between the protest in the south and that of the north is that the south has identifiable leaders who are leading the protest but in the north nobody can pinpoint who the leaders are and in the absence of leadership, what will come out of it is anarchy.
The violence in the north is a bottled up anger which has generated for decades and now an opportunity came. The millions of young people in northern Nigeria today who have demonstrated by the use of violence are a time bomb not just for the north but for the whole country.
The earlier we do something about the endemic poverty and destitution in the north the better for the country. Quite rightly we must hold President Tinubu to account as the elected president of this country but he is not the problem and he is not the solution to the issues we face in northern Nigeria.
The poverty, illiteracy, underdevelopment, extremism and terrorism which we have been facing in the north for about three decades were products of abject neglect by successive leaders who come from our own part of the country. If we are going to share the blame, I can say President Tinubu should take 10 per cent of the blame but the bulk of it has to do with the leadership that failed to use the opportunity of power to utilize the resources of the region for the benefit of the people of the region.
The governors, political leaders, religious leaders, business leaders and intellectuals of the region need to converge and address the issues of poverty and underdevelopment in the region so that this will come to an end. The problems of the north can largely be solved by the people from the north.
The protesting children in the north are a time bomb —Gov Abdullahi Sule, Nasarawa
Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State, also speaking in an interview on Channels television’s programme, Politics Today, on Thursday agreed with Senator Shehu Sani, who appeared on the same programme a day earlier, that the protesting children in the north were indeed a time bomb for the country.
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