The North At A Crossroads – By Abubakar Abdulhamid

The North At A Crossroads – By Abubakar Abdulhamid

There is a moment of reckoning that comes to every society, a moment when we must pause, look around us, and ask difficult questions about the direction we are heading. For those of us who call Northern Nigeria home, that moment is now.

As I walk through the streets of our cities and villages, I see young men and women brimming with potential, yet drowning in a system that has failed to prepare them for the challenges of the 21st century. We speak of entrepreneurship, yet our youth lack the skills to start businesses. We talk about technology, yet our schools lag behind the digital revolution. We claim to care about mental stability, yet we ignore the psychological scars of poverty and insecurity. And we promise self-sufficiency, yet we perpetuate cycles of dependency that stretch across generations.

Meanwhile, our leaders are preoccupied with a different agenda entirely.

In a time when the world is advancing at breakneck speed, when Southern Nigerian leaders are forming security coalitions, building infrastructure, purchasing advanced security apparatuses like drones, and equipping their regions for the future, Northern leaders appear fixated on a spectacle that belongs to another era.

Weddings. Multiple weddings. Grand celebrations of polygamy while our children starve.

It is not the institution of marriage itself that draws my criticism, marriage is a sacred bond in our faith and culture. Rather, it is the timing, the extravagance, and the sheer disconnect from reality that troubles me. When a leader spends billions on a wedding while schools crumble, hospitals lack medicine, and security forces lack basic equipment, we must question the moral compass guiding our governance.

In nine months, these unions will produce children. These children will enter a world where their fathers have provided them with names and lineage, but little else. No functional schools. No stable economy. No security. And soon, they will join the thousands of others who wander our streets, uneducated, unemployed, and hopeless.

What happens to a child born into a system that offers no opportunity? They become vulnerable. Vulnerable to poverty, to exploitation, to radicalization.

We have seen this play out before. The streets of our cities are already filled with children begging, their hands outstretched, their eyes empty. These children did not choose this fate. They inherited it from leaders who chose spectacle over substance, weddings over welfare, and personal gratification over national development.

The connection between failed governance and insurgency is not abstract, it is direct and undeniable. When young people have no hope, no skills, no future, they become easy recruits for those who promise them purpose, even if that purpose is destruction. Our leaders’ obsession with polygamy is not a harmless cultural practice, it is a factory producing future generations of desperate, unguided citizens.

Look southward and see a different vision of leadership. Governors and local leaders are not merely talking about security, they are building it. They are forming coalitions, sharing intelligence, purchasing drones and advanced surveillance equipment, and taking responsibility for the safety of their people.

They are investing in infrastructure, technology, and human capital. They understand that the future belongs to those who prepare for it.

What do we have in the North? We have leaders who treat governance as an inheritance, who view public funds as personal wealth, and who believe that the solution to every problem is another wife, another child, another cycle of dependency.

The most painful part of this tragedy is how we have come to accept it as normal. We have grown comfortable with failure. We have grown accustomed to leaders who offer us nothing but empty promises and grand celebrations.

We attend these weddings, we celebrate with them, we praise them, and we forget that our children are hungry. We forget that our schools are collapsing. We forget that our security forces are outgunned. We forget that our future is being mortgaged for the pleasure of the present.

This normalization of dysfunction is perhaps our greatest enemy. It is not merely the actions of our leaders that condemn us, it is our silence, our acceptance, our complicity.

I do not write this to despair, but to awaken. I do not speak these words to curse our leaders, but to pray for their guidance.

Allah has given us abundant resources. The North is not poor in land, in minerals, in human potential. We are poor only in leadership. We are poor in vision. We are poor in accountability.

We must demand better. We must hold our leaders accountable not just for what they steal, but for what they squander. We must insist that our resources be directed toward education, healthcare, security, and economic development, not toward the celebration of excess.

We must teach our youth entrepreneurial skills, not just religious piety. We must equip them with technological knowledge, not just memorization. We must build their mental resilience, not their dependency. And we must guide them toward self-sufficiency, not toward the streets.

I pray that Allah guides our leaders in thinking straight. I pray that He opens their eyes to the reality of our condition. I pray that He gives them the courage to change course, to invest in the future, and to prioritize the welfare of the people over their own desires.

I pray that our children will not inherit the darkness we have created. I pray that the coming generations will look back on this era with bewilderment, wondering how we could have been so careless with their future.

The abyss of darkness is not inevitable. It is a choice. And we still have time to choose differently.

The North stands at a crossroads. On one path lies more of the same, more weddings, more children, more poverty, more insurgency, more darkness. On the other path lies accountability, investment, development, and hope.

The choice is ours. It is not too late. But time is running out.

We must speak. We must act. We must demand better. And we must never, ever accept this tragedy as normal.

Wallahi, when I think of the North, I still see hope, but only if we are willing to fight for it.