In today’s Northern Nigeria, no sector runs with the speed, coordination, and unfailing energy of the political industry. It is the only “ministry” that works every day, attracts endless investment, recruits fresh manpower in every community, and produces predictable returns for its stakeholders. Unlike other sectors, it has no power shortage, no raw-material crisis, no competition from imports, and no technology gap.
If other industries operated with the same relentlessness as politics, the story of the North would be different. But the data shows the opposite. While our political machinery is highly functional, our real industries such as agriculture, manufacturing, education, technology, and creative sectors remain either underdeveloped or in outright decline.
The figures are sobering. In the North West, 67 percent of people live in poverty, and in the North East, 66 percent, according to the 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index. Northern Nigeria also carries the largest share of out-of-school children in the country. Out of the estimated 10 to 18 million children not attending school nationwide, about 7.95 million are from just seven northern states: Kano, Katsina, Bauchi, Kebbi, Yobe, Kaduna, and Niger. One state, Kano, alone accounts for 1.9 million of them. Insecurity deepens the crisis. In March 2024, mass kidnappings in Kaduna forced school closures, pushing more children out of classrooms and eroding the future human capital of the region.
Meanwhile, other parts of Nigeria have built dynamic economies outside politics. Lagos leads as the country’s start-up hub. In 2024, Nigeria topped Africa in venture capital funding, with Lagos attracting the largest share. The creative sector thrives there, from Nollywood to music, fashion, and digital media, and Lagos dominates the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics data on movie production. These industries create jobs, attract global attention, and generate wealth independent of political patronage.
The South East offers another lesson. Aba’s Ariaria leather cluster hosts over 50,000 enterprises, employs 1.5 million people, and generates an annual turnover of 144 billion naira. That success comes from deliberate planning, infrastructure investment, and market access. In contrast, Northern industrial hubs have been left to wither. Kano’s once-thriving textile industry is now on the brink of collapse due to chronic power shortages, smuggling, and years of policy neglect. As recently as June 2024, industry leaders warned that without urgent intervention, the sector could disappear entirely. Even our leather industry, with the potential to generate one billion dollars in exports and 750,000 jobs, remains stuck at the raw-material stage because there is little investment in value addition, quality control, or global supply-chain integration.
The vacuum left by collapsing industries is quickly filled by politics. For young people, there are no modern factories hiring en masse, no tech hubs producing the next generation of innovators, and no creative economy building sustainable careers. Politics, however, offers quick entry points such as campaign mobilising, praise-singing, and appointment-seeking, all of which depend on loyalty rather than skill. The labour statistics show that while unemployment rates may appear to improve, underemployment and informal work dominate, especially in rural areas, meaning many people are technically working but earning too little to build real livelihoods. In this environment, politics becomes the default industry.
Some argue that the fault lies in President Bola Tinubu prioritising his own region. I have seen many complain about it, and I also believe it is happening. But is Tinubu the only person we should blame? If Tinubu is Yoruba and will naturally look out for his region, what about the governors we ourselves elected in the North? What exactly are they building that will strengthen the capacity of our other industries? Take my own state, Kebbi, for example. Since the assumption of the current government, the percentage of internally generated revenue compared to the budget has been regressing. The government has put no visible energy into reversing the trend, and our dependence on the federal government and loans keeps growing. These people are not thinking about anything that will help the region’s long-term survival. The more disturbing part is that even the graduates in our communities do not pay attention to these realities. And when these issues come up, are they not northerners who gather in Kaduna to defend the government and its actions for 48 hours straight?
Yet this is not destiny. The same organisational discipline that fuels political campaigns could be redirected to genuine economic transformation. Picture a leather and footwear cluster in Birnin Kebbi or Argungu, running on reliable electricity, equipped with processing facilities, and connected to both domestic and export markets. Imagine agriprocessing hubs for onions, rice, and sorghum that give farmers better prices and employ thousands. Think of ICT training and outsourcing centres in our universities, feeding Nigeria’s booming digital economy. Envision vocational institutes for tailoring, carpentry, and metalwork linked to actual contracts and apprenticeships. See state-backed seed investment funds co-financed by private capital but tied to measurable export growth. Above all, imagine a secure environment that allows schools to stay open, keeping millions of children in the classrooms instead of in the streets.
Perhaps the political industry in the North, if truly harnessed, could be the engine for this transformation. It has the networks, the mobilisation capacity, and the funding flow that no other sector can match. But in reality, those who control it have no intention of deploying it for such purposes. The political class is invested in preserving politics as an end in itself, not as a means to broader development. And the youth, socialised to see politics as the only path to relevance, have not demanded a different agenda. Their loudest voices are heard during primaries and rallies, not at industrial launches or educational reforms.
This is the central tragedy. The North already has an “industry” that works, politics but refuses to channel its machinery toward other sectors. Until leaders see political mobilisation as a tool for economic growth, and until young people insist on more than appointments and campaign stipends, Northern Nigeria will remain trapped in a self-made poverty loop. The problem is no longer about capacity; it is about choice. And so far, we have been choosing wrong.
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Opinion