June 2, 2026.
There is a rumor crawling through the political underbelly of Nigeria that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, after his second term in office, is seriously considering the unthinkable: the formal division of the country. Could it be that the man from the South-West who never believe in one Nigeria has grown tired of the endless drain on our collective sanity? Could it be that the Northern experiment, which began with such promise in 1960, has finally revealed itself as a failed enterprise of monumental proportions? And here is the question that should keep every Northerner awake at night: if the sword of division never falls, will the North ever produce a single ounce of sense?
The answer, as bitter as it is, is no.
Let us begin with the Northern elite. Their obsession with the federal purse is not just an obsession; it is a pathology. For decades, the so-called leaders of the North have clutched onto federal revenue allocation like a drowning man clutching a log of rotten wood. They have been paid and paid and paid again. And what have they given in return? A region where children beg for bread while their governors fly private jets to London. A region where life expectancy hovers below fifty while politicians build mansions in Abuja and Dubai. The Northern elite have turned the federal purse into a feeding bottle, and they have sucked it dry. They have neglected the welfare of their subjects, abandoned the protection of lives and property, and turned banditry and kidnapping into booming local industries. When villages are razed and mothers weep, where are these elites? They are in the Villa, begging for more money from the federal purse, more money always translates to more wives, more mansions and private jets.
Then we have the educated class of the North. What a tragedy they are. Armed with degrees from Ahmadu Bello University, from the University of Maiduguri, from Bayero University Kano, and even from foreign institutions, they have done absolutely nothing with their knowledge except decorate their own mediocrity and pampered overbloated pride. They sit in air-conditioned offices, write beautiful policy papers that no one implements, and keep quiet when their own communities are burning. They are complicit through silence and lazy through choice. They know the solutions. They understand the economics. They see the collapse happening in slow motion. Yet they refuse to speak, refuse to act, refuse to lead. They have traded their conscience for a monthly salary and their sense of duty for a government car and periodic allowances, foreign trips and plague of well furnished woods as awards of life long achievements. The educated Northern elite is the most disappointing, self serving and delusional class of people in all of Nigeria.
And what of the business elite? Their philosophy is simple: profit above all else. They have watched their region descend into chaos and turned it into an opportunity. Bandits need supplies. Kidnappers need middlemen. Displaced communities need overpriced food. The business elite of the North have mastered the art of making money from misery. They do not invest in agriculture or solid minerals or renewable energy because those require long-term thinking and genuine development. No, they prefer the quick returns of crisis commerce. They are not builders. They are vultures. And they are fat and satisfied precisely because the region remains broken.
Then we have the so-called Yan Boko, the educated youth who should have been the vanguard of change. Instead, they have become the willing tools of destruction. They carry out the dirty work of politicians. They spread religious bigotry disguised as piety. They have learned nothing from their education except how to hate more efficiently. The Yan Boko are the foot soldiers of ignorance, and they march proudly to the drumbeat of their own ruin armed with proficient and well polished English fluent enough to rival a Brit.
Let me be categorically clear. I do not blame the traditional rulers in this regard. Their powers were stolen long ago by military decrees and civilian constitutions. Today, an emir cannot raise an army. He cannot levy a tax. He cannot even discipline a district head without state government approval. The traditional rulers are glorified cultural dancers with big turbans and zero real authority. So I will not waste words on them.
But I do blame the Islamic scholars. You have failed. You have failed spectacularly. You spend your days obsessing over whether a finger should be raised during supplication or whether the beard should be trimmed or left wild. You divide your followers into warring camps: Qadiriyya versus Tijaniyya, Izala versus Darika. You demand cultlike obedience to your particular school of thought while ignoring the core message of Islam itself. Unity and survival of the Ummah. Where is the teaching of justice? Where is the teaching of knowledge-seeking? Where is the teaching that Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves? Instead, you have turned the Quran into a weapon of domination and the mosque into a theater of sectarian warfare. Your followers are ignorant because you want them ignorant. An ignorant follower is an obedient follower. A knowledgeable follower asks questions. And questions are dangerous to your petty power.
The traditional rulers, yes, I will say this plainly: even though powerless they are led by greed. They have sold their titles and respect for cash and their influence for government appointments. The common man no longer bows to them. The common man laughs at them. The traditional ruler who cannot stop a single kidnapping has no moral authority to speak. They have lost respect because they never earned it through service.
And the ordinary Northern man? He has failed himself. He refused to seek knowledge. He refused to send his children to school. He preferred the shortcut of sentiment over the long road of learning. He became the perfect tool for every political and religious manipulator. He is now being used to destabilize and ultimately destroy himself. He carries the weapon that kills his own son. He cheers the politician who steals his future. He curses the system that he himself refuses to fix.
And yet the North sits on resources that could transform the world. Agriculture: the finest grazing lands, the richest soil for groundnuts, cotton, sorghum, maize, and rice. The North could feed West Africa alone if it wanted. Solid minerals: gold in Zamfara, tin in Plateau, lead and zinc in Ebonyi, limestone everywhere, barite for oil drilling, and countless other minerals untouched and unmapped. Rare earth elements: the hidden treasures that power every smartphone and every electric vehicle on the planet. Energy sources: coal in Nasarawa and Kogi, hydro potential along the Niger and Kaduna rivers, solar radiation so intense that a single square kilometer could power a city. Human resources: a young, energetic population that, if properly educated, could become the engine of African innovation.
But what do we see? We see a lazy, docile, gullible region that cannot even harvest what grows naturally in its soil. Farmers are chased off their land by bandits while the government does nothing. Solid minerals are dug by illegal miners who sell to foreigners for pennies while the environment is destroyed. Rare earths remain in the ground because no one has the vision to map them. Energy projects are abandoned mid-construction while the people live in darkness. And the human resources? They are either fleeing South, fleeing to Europe or Arabia, or picking up AK-47s to become terrorists.
Compare us to others. Botswana found diamonds and built one of Africa's most stable and prosperous nations. Chile found copper and transformed itself into a South American tiger. Norway found oil and created a sovereign wealth fund that will last centuries. Even our neighbor, Niger Republic, is beginning to exploit its uranium and gold with more seriousness than we have ever shown. The North has more resources than all these places combined. Yet we are poorer, more violent, and more ignorant than almost any comparable region on earth.
What the North needs is a baptism of fire. Not the fire of violence, but the fire of severe, unrelenting shock. We need to be broken so we can be rebuilt. We need the comfortable lies to be shattered. We need the false sheikhs to be silenced. We need the lazy educated class to be dragged out of their air-conditioned offices and forced to work in the fields and mines alongside the farmers and miners. We need the business elite to be taxed until they contribute to development. We need the ordinary man to be shocked into the realization that no one is coming to save him. He must save himself.
That is why the title stands. If Nigeria is not divided, we will never have any sense in the North. Because division would force the North to finally stand on its own feet. No more federal purse to blame. No more Southern revenue to fight over. No more excuse that Lagos and Port Harcourt took our money. Just the North and its vast resources and its own people. Would we survive? Or would we collapse completely? The answer to that question would determine whether we finally find our sense.
Perhaps division is the only teacher that the North has not yet insulted, bribed, or killed. Perhaps the breaking of Nigeria is the only surgery that can remove the tumor of laziness, greed, and ignorance from the Northern soul. It is a terrible medicine. But terrible illnesses require terrible medicines.
So let the rumor be true. Let Tinubu divide us . Let the North be free to sink or swim. Because only when drowning becomes real will we learn to move our arms and legs. Only when the federal lifeline is cut will we discover whether we have any sense at all. My fear, my deep and abiding fear, is that we do not. And if we do not, then division will merely reveal what has always been there: a region of immense wealth and even more immense foolishness, waiting for nothing except the final, merciful dissolution of Nigeria.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
Abuja Network News
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