North In Pathetic Situation, Lost Leadership Direction – Ango Abdullahi, Bugaje

Former Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria and elder statesman, Prof Ango Abdullahi, and a political economist, Dr Usman Bugaje, have said the northern region has lost values and leadership direction.

They lamented that the region’s present challenges were largely the result of abandoning the principles that once defined its founding leaders.

Abdullahi said this at the third edition of the Late Gen. Hassan Usman Katsina Memorial Conference held in Kaduna, themed: “From Sacrifice to Strategy: Rekindling Gen. Hassan Usman Katsina’s Vision for a Prosperous Northern Nigeria.”

Addressing the gathering, Prof Abdullahi said the North had departed from the values inherited from its parents and pioneer leaders, insisting that the region’s decline was rooted in moral and leadership failure rather than a lack of physical development.

“The North has lost its values. You may not want to hear this, but that is the case today. If we have not lost the values we inherited from our parents, from our pioneer leaders, the North will not be where it is today,” he said.

According to him, although cities across the North have witnessed physical expansion, the virtues of discipline, honesty, sacrifice and selfless leadership that once shaped the region had gradually disappeared.

“The North is in a pathetic situation. For me, that is the only reason why the North has stagnated. Don’t worry about the buildings you see. The basic issue concerning where the North finds itself today is the loss of our values,” he stated.

He urged Northern leaders to draw lessons from the life of the late Gen. Hassan Katsina, whom he described as one of the generation that upheld integrity, accountability and service to society.

“If we can go back to those values, particularly by remembering those who inherited them and practised them, there is no doubt in my mind that the North would have been different today,” Abdullahi added.

In his keynote address, Dr Usman Bugaje said the North had suffered decades of economic decline, insecurity and institutional collapse, “because it had drifted away from the leadership ideals of men like Gen. Hassan Katsina.

“The troubles of the North are many and varied. Food production is going down daily, hundreds of thousands are being displaced from their homes, the economy has been shrinking, poverty has nearly tripled, education and healthcare have collapsed, and our human capital has been depleted.

“It is indeed time to ask how much of the North still remains. Or better still, how much of the sanity of the elite, especially those in government, still remains? Today, who is there to go to? Where are the General Hassans to complain to? Where exactly is the leadership? Where is the direction?”

Bugaje criticised what he described as the complacency of sections of the Northern elite, saying many preferred lamenting the region’s problems without offering practical solutions.

Recalling a personal encounter with the late Gen. Hassan Katsina, Bugaje narrated how the former military governor stood by him after the then American Ambassador complained about an article he wrote criticising Western imperialism.

Bugaje said leaders of Hassan Katsina’s generation combined modern education with deeply rooted Northern values, describing them as contented, community-oriented, disciplined and committed to justice.