I am Hausa. I am a Northerner born and raised under the skies of Katsina. Everything I am, everything I have become, traces back to this soil. And it is precisely because I love this soil that I must speak the truth that many Northerners whisper in private but dare not say in public.
The Northern elite has failed us. Not just failed—betrayed us. For decades, they have traded our poverty for their prosperity, our ignorance for their influence, and our suffering for their security. They have governed not to build, but to consume. They have led not to serve, but to loot. And they have kept us loyal not through results, but through religion and ethnicity—the twin opiates of a people too long denied real choices.
The elites that ate it’s own:
The same leaders who have held the North in their grip for generations have little to show for it. Where are the industries they built? Where are the schools that rival those in the South? Where are the hospitals that actually work? Where are the roads that connect our villages to opportunity?
We have produced governors who emptied treasuries and left debts. We have produced senators who legislated for themselves and forgot their constituents. We have produced presidents who presided over the greatest expansion of insecurity in Nigeria’s history while their cronies feasted on public funds.
The bandits who terrorize our farms today are not aliens from another planet. They are products of a system that abandoned the poor while protecting the powerful.
The elite will tell you to vote for them because they share your language or your faith. They wrap themselves in religion and point to ancestry as proof of entitlement. But when have those things ever put food on your table? When have they protected your children from kidnapping? When have they created jobs for your family?
The religion trap:
They have used Islam as a shield while behaving in ways that would make the Prophet weep. They preach piety while practicing plunder. They call for unity while dividing the spoils among themselves. They demand loyalty from the people while showing none in return.
I am a Muslim. I fast this Ramadan with faith in my heart. But I refuse to let anyone use my religion to blind me to corruption. Islam did not come to make us passive recipients of injustice. It came to make us seekers of justice.
The same Qur’an that commands prayer also commands resistance to oppression. The same Prophet who taught mercy also demanded accountability.
The elite have no answer for this. They cannot defend their record, so they attack the messenger. They cannot show achievements, so they show ancestry. They cannot show results, so they display religious symbols. And too many of us have fallen for it for generations.
The Peter Obi factor
This is why matters to the North. Not because he is Igbo. Not because he is Christian. Not because he comes from the South. But because he represents something the North has not seen in its own leadership for decades: competence with character, vision with integrity, ambition with accountability.
Look at his record in . He did not loot. He did not pile up unsustainable debts. He left savings for his successor. He built schools. He supported healthcare. He paid salaries. These are not miracles—they are the basics of responsible governance that many of our leaders have somehow made to seem extraordinary.
Obi has visited the North repeatedly—often more than some Northern politicians visit their own constituencies. He has sat with farmers, spoken with traders, and interacted with Almajiri children. He has shown curiosity and humility where others show entitlement.
This is not just campaigning. It is leadership built on listening.
A moment of choice
The North today stands at a crossroads. We can continue to recycle the same elite who have perfected the politics of poverty, or we can begin to demand something different—leaders who measure success not by the size of their convoys but by the dignity of their people.
Supporting a leader like is not about abandoning Northern identity. It is about reclaiming Northern dignity. It is about proving that the North is wise enough to judge leadership by competence rather than tribe, by results rather than rhetoric.
For too long, the North has been used as a political ladder. It is time we stopped being a ladder and started being a voice.
History will judge this generation of Northerners by whether we remained silent in the face of failure or whether we chose courage over comfort.
The North does not need another ruler.
The North needs rescue—from the system that has kept it poor for far too long.
