Kaduna State governor, Uba Sani, has said the Northern region must stop complaining and start acting to tackle its challenges.
The governor noted that the North has enough human resources to solve its developmental challenges if the elites come together and chart a way forward.
Governor Sani stated this when the leadership of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), led by chairman of Board of Trustees, Alhaji Bashir Dalhatu (Wazirin Dutse), paid him a courtesy call in Kaduna.
The governor said the North has successful professionals and businessmen in every field of human endeavour, whose expertise can be harnessed for the benefit of the region.
Sani commended ACF’s plans to establish a Central Endowment Fund, advising that it should emphasise skills acquisition in order to ‘”make our people self-reliant.”
The governor lamented that there were too many northerners who were financially excluded, “because they don’t have bank accounts and so cannot benefit from government’s social intervention programmes”
Governor Sani recalled that one of the first decisions he took when he assumed office was to sign the First Executive Order on Financial Inclusion and within one year over 2.1 million poor people were onboarded onto the financial system.
He also advised northern businessmen to invest in the financial sector, which will greatly assist Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the North, revealing that more than 60% of local government areas in the North lacked a single bank branch.
Sani said ACF remained one of the key platforms that is capable of addressing the challenges confronting the North because it is a neutral body without political bias.
The governor pointed out that the lack of synergy between ACF and State governments in the North, as well as political office holders of northern region, had hampered the forum’s activities in the past, adding that the new leadership was charting a new course.
‘’For years, we have repeatedly spoken about our challenges — poverty, education gaps, healthcare deficits, and other development issues. I believe we have reached a point where we must stop complaining and start acting,’’ he pointed out.
‘’Today as we are speaking, there are over 4,000 branches of national banks in Nigeria. But only Kaduna and Kano States have about 100 branches. But if you go to some states in the South that are not even up to 20% of the population of Kano State, they have more bank branches than Kano State which has 44 local governments,” he lamented.
Speaking earlier, chairman of ACF Board of Trustees, Alhaji Bashir Dalhatu, said that the ACF delegation was at Sir Kashim Ibrahim House to formally notify Governor Uba Sani of its forthcoming 25th Anniversary, which will hold in Kaduna from November 20 to 22, 2025.
