Nigerians on Quora provide deep insights into their country’s quagmire
Question:
Why is Southern Nigeria more affluent and much more developed than Northern Nigeria?
Answer:
By Emmanuel-Francis Nwaolisa Ogomegbunam, Nigerian
Regional disparities are a feature of every country. The south might be much more developed than the north, for example, Southern England vs Northern England.
I used to think that this was simply a matter of port cities driving growth, but not all countries share Nigeria’s geography.
Northern England has many famous ports anyways. There is also the complication of Northern Italy vs Southern Italy, with the former being richer.
My working theory, at the moment, is that the disparities can be explained by a confluence of factors, namely neighbours and economic structure.
Southern Nigerian cities are surrounded by other rich southern cities, both in Nigeria and across the region.
In contrast to the commercial bustle of those southern cities, the North is isolated, with sand and terrorist enclaves for neighbours. A rule of thumb, across the region, might as well be ‘The North is poor’.
Further, the south’s access to the coast places them in a key position to play the role of middle-man in the sale of electronic and industrial goods. Large-scale commerce is always a route to wealth.
Much of the poverty in the North of the country, I would say is directly linked to its economic structure. Most damaging was the collapse of the region’s textile industry.
Behind its wall of tariffs, it had provided a ladder onto the middle-class for hundreds of thousands of northerners. Its demise destroyed the buffer between the classes in the north.
__________________________________________________________________
Related articles:
Buhari ignores massive protests, jets off to Turkey
Buhari slipping Northern Nigeria into ‘Arewanistan’, says Kukah
__________________________________________________________________
No middle class in the North
As street wisdom has it, the north has no middle-class. That is the primary difference between North and South. The North has its billionaires, indeed, it just might have more than the South, but many more southerners are middle-class.
As things stand, except for a few academics, journalists, company staff, and sellers of luxury goods, the sole route to income for a northerner lies in peasant agriculture, southward or Gulf-side migration or criminality. Of those options, peasant agriculture and criminality are negatives, economically speaking.
Northern migrants in the south form a massive underclass. Other than the few who work as foreign exchange dealers or in white-collar occupations, their relations with southerners are often from a position of submission. A factor that has played no small part in roiling the country’s politics.
However, in the south, they have access to the factors that account for the region’s educational gap, namely proximity to certain facilities lacking in the north.
However, that isn’t all good news. Although a northern migrant immediately earns more, the possibilities for social mobility is slim. Being on the region’s lowest-income rungs, they are naturally reliant on state schools that do not exactly have the reputation for competence shared by many of their private counterparts.
Further, income aside, many of the best private schools are, if not outright owned by Christian institutions, then adopt an outwardly Christian ethos. Put simply, for the northerner keen on social mobility, if they are Muslim, then conversion is a necessary first step.
Diaspora remittance to the South
Another factor is the fact that southerners migrate too, but increasingly less to the north. Nigerians are a fairly prominent diaspora, the vast majority of them are southern Nigerians. In 2018, they remitted 25 billion dollars.
Northern migrants to the south are hardworking, but Nigeria is simply not rich enough to compete with 25 billion dollars. This implies that southern Nigerians have access to higher levels of liquid capital, to the detriment of the north.
Addressing the prominent regional disparity is one of many existential questions facing Nigeria, especially as it increasingly adopts ethnic and religious undertones.
Further, southern Nigeria faces a growing threat with the increasing trend towards global decarbonisation.
Lagos aside, the other rich southern cities have their status as oil states to account for their wealth. The south in general also benefits from being owners of the countries largest banks. Those banks are, however, heavily exposed to the oil sector.
By all projections, the metaphorical cake will get smaller.
Southern cities are the most prosperous parts of Nigeria, they are also highly unequal, poorly policed and increasingly stratified, ethnically and religiously.
Like I wrote, the country faces many existential questions.
Answer:
By Uzegbu Chibuzor Ezenwa (Architect/builder at Self-Employment)
Unlike the answer given by Nwaolisa above, I didn’t expect that answer from him being a southerner from Nigeria, I know he’s a southerner from his last name.
There are many good reasons why southern Nigeria is more economically affluent and more developed infrastructurally than the north.
- Education
An average northerner from Nigeria does not see any importance in formal education, having any academic qualifications or even the importance of knowing how to read and write.
They are known to be more interested in their “Almajiri” which is seeking Islamic knowledge, having a distaste in formal education or “sinful western education” as they call it.
They are and want to remain cattle rearers and slave laborers, prefer to do petty works and earn petty money like shoe-shining and mending, cloth mending, subsistence agriculture, barrow pushing at market squares, picking of damaged iron and aluminum materials at dump sites for recycling, digging of pit latrines, being night watchers and gate men.
These and other more low life occupations they do in the south of Nigeria where they come to for greener pastures, the same way southerners from Nigeria travel to countries in Europe, America and Asia for greener pastures.
Meanwhile, the average southerner wants to get out of poverty as soon as he or she can, and for this every southerner wants to be educated to at least bachelors degree, for we southerners have the mentality that education takes you out of poverty and shame.
In the south anybody without formal education is seen by the society as without any real importance, significance and socially qualified. Unless that person has attained a very good societal or financial status through business or skill.
Southerners from Nigeria, the IGBOs, are known to be the most renowned, seasoned, intelligent, shrewd, hardworking, richest, adventurous, educated and most relentless businessmen in Africa.
So most of the good infrastructure, economic growth, academic excellence and progress you see in the south is made from the people and by the people, except of course the tarred roads, which are specifically carried out by the federal and state governments.
Nigeria is one of the highest producers of crude oil in the world but the average Nigerian does not see the effect of the enormous money generated from the sale of the crude oil injected into the development of the country especially in the south where the oil is gotten from.
Instead the money is shared by the politicians and senators and other government individuals and the rest is loaned to northern farmers to expand their practice and make more money by the government who are and has always been northerners.
And the worst part is that these loans given to farmers in the north from money generated from the south are never recovered, they take them and take them for good. But with lesser education and know-how these northern people continue to be poorer.
And with more education and know-how, with relentless mentality and drive to achieve, with the skill and natural intelligence, with the natural business acumen and in-born gene for adventure the IGBO man continues to over-achieve, they continue to grow, in wealth and knowledge.
- Business
With an in-born acumen for business and entrepreneurship, an average southerner can go from nothing to something.
Aside from Aliko Dangote who is a northerner and the highest manufacturer of consumer goods in Africa, he is the only rich businessman northerner in Nigeria (aside from politicians) who has the business acumen and know-how that you can find in every average southerner.
We have as an Igbo man Innocent Chukwuma Nwala, the owner of Innoson Motors, a car manufacturer in Nnewi, Anambra State. We have Arthur Eze who has made more than $300 million selling oil blocs in Liberia. Lol not even in his own country.
We have Tony Elumelu, who has a cash fortune of more than $1.6 billion. He is former chief executive officer of UBA bank and current owner of heir holdings. We have Cletus Ibeto, the chief executive officer of IBETO Group.
These are just a few of the millions of southern men who out of their own pocket are involved in philanthropic works and help develop their places in the south from where they come from, with little or no help from the federal or state government.
- Adventure
They say that “Any part of the world where you go and you did not see an Igbo man go home immediately because it is not humans who live there”.
Southerners from Nigeria are adventurous and in-born travelers, they would travel to any existing part of the world to make money and get out of poverty.
And in their travels they are willing to take anything, be it persecution, hardship, harsh weather, racism, risks, they will face seas, deserts, forests oceans, bullets, death and worse to make money.
In the south there is still poverty, but a southerner will not hesitate for a second to do anything that will make him rich.
- Conclusion
Some 97 per cent of southerners can read and write, formally educated or not, and we all know this alone exposes people to many economy opportunities.
You stand more chances of getting better jobs, the ability to express yourself and become recognized in a given place or occasion, their society influences them.
You meet and interact with educated people on a daily basis, you pick ideas and knowledge from them, you’re becoming more intelligent. These encourage business startups, inventions, manufacturing, growth.
Southerners live in better environment, they hear how the governmental structure works, they read the newspapers, there are street lights, signs, there are tarred roads, the water board for tap water. These expose people to information and knowledge.
The mobile phone. Every single southern youth from 15 years up has and Android smartphone. They know and are on social media, they know the Mark Suckerberg story, the Bill Gates story, the Elon Musk story, international sports men and women.
This is knowledge and information but most importantly it is inspiration.
- No inspiration in the north to excel
But in the north it is not like this: they only have Aliko Dangote and the politicians destroying the nation.
We have a president who is a northerner and without a formal primary school education. And we keep making these mistakes, the reason why the country doesn’t develop and move forward.
An average northerner can’t read or write, most speak very very little English or do not understand it at all, hence they can’t get and hold a job. They can only do menial jobs at construction sites.
And the ones I mentioned above are only a few out of tens of millions who exchange currencies at black market bureau de change (called AMA-HAUSA) – meaning “Hausa road”. Hausa is the general name for the core Muslim northerners in the south south, south East and south west states.
Apart from the few rich northerners who travel abroad not for greener pastures but for tourism and [pilgrimage to] Mecca, the average northerner comes to the south.
The federal government helps them in the north, but the southerners develop ourselves, and we’re better off.
- Culled from Quora.
