By Muhammad Suwidi Yusha’u
In a region where poverty, insecurity, and underdevelopment remain daily realities, the choices of Arewa’s state governors tell a painful story. Each budget cycle is filled with grand announcements, multi-billion naira flyovers, new government houses, convoys of exotic cars, and endless ceremonies. Yet, step outside these prestige projects, and one finds citizens battling for safe drinking water, medicine, schools, and protection from bandits. This is not just mismanagement; it is a betrayal of the social contract between leaders and the people.
Across Northern Nigeria, state governors channel billions into image-driven projects, foreign scholarships, Hajj pilgrimages, and mass weddings, while essentials like water, healthcare, schools, and security suffer. Below, we break down the real costs that highlight this troubling imbalance.
Thirst in the Land of Rivers
Northern Nigeria is naturally blessed with rivers, dams, and underground aquifers. Yet rural families trek for hours to fetch dirty water. Boreholes lie abandoned, and communities drink from unsafe ponds. Yearly, billions are allocated to water projects, but most end as contracts on paper. Meanwhile, governors stand proudly to commission another flyover that adds little to human survival.
Hospitals Without Medicine, Schools Without Teachers
Across Arewa’s towns and villages, empty clinics stand as monuments of neglect. Hospitals lack basic drugs; mothers lose children to treatable illnesses. Schools exist without teachers, desks, or even roofs. But the public treasury is regularly tapped for bulletproof SUVs, foreign scholarships for a few privileged students, lavish widow remarriages, and extravagant pilgrim sponsorships These are misplaced priorities that elevate prestige over service.
Insecurity Without Response
From Zamfara to Borno, Kaduna to Niger, communities live in fear of bandits and terrorists. Kidnappings, killings, and displacement are now part of daily life. Instead of strengthening local security networks, creating jobs for restless youth, or rehabilitating victims, governors prefer ribbon-cutting ceremonies that have no bearing on safety. The constitutional duty to secure lives and property has been reduced to rhetoric.
Prestige Over People
A government house does not feed the hungry. An exotic car does not save a sick child. A flyover does not quench thirst. Leadership is not about monuments of stone and steel but about the human lives it uplifts. When leaders prefer grandeur over the essentials of survival, they betray the very trust that placed them in office.
- Foreign Scholarships While Local Schools Collapse
Despite the rampant out-of-school crisis, UNESCO reports that over 10 million out-of-school children across Bauchi, Kebbi, Katsina, Kano, and other states continue to sponsor students abroad at great expense.
Kano State spent ₦36.5 billion between 2013 and 2023 to send approximately 115,288 students overseas.
Sokoto State allocated ₦14 billion for about 4,600 students between 2016 and 2022.
- Borno spent ₦588 million for 180 students, and Kaduna spent ₦1.5 billion for 107 students in the same period.
Meanwhile, countless schools lack teachers, classrooms, and learning materials.
- Hajj Sponsorships Over Public Welfare
Religious sponsorships drain public coffers but provide little development value:
-Niger State spent ₦3.02 billion in 2025 to sponsor 357 pilgrims—despite hospitals like Minna General losing newborns due to power failures.
Between 2022-2023, governors across states spent ₦14.84 billion sponsoring 4,771 pilgrims.
In 2024, Sokoto state allocated ₦1.44 billion to support 3,200 pilgrims, despite having over a million out-of-school children.
-Ebonyi State spent ₦551 million for just 33 pilgrims, an average of over ₦16 million per person, while owing over ₦19 billion in debt.
Overall, Nigeria’s federal and state governments spent nearly ₦120 billion on pilgrimages between 2022 and 2024.
- Mass Weddings: Charity or Spectacle?
Plans for mass weddings in Niger State intended to “help” orphans were suspended after concerns about age and consent. Critics warned that these were spectacle items rather than substance for empowerment.
Reddit users weighed in:
“A mass wedding for 100 girls orphaned by attacks … prompted an outcry amid concerns that some of the brides may be underage”.
- Selective Palliatives and Political Patronage
Funds meant for crisis relief and welfare often become instruments of patronage—distributed selectively, favouring political cronies rather than the most vulnerable. (While specifics are sparse in public sources, the pattern is well-documented across reports.)
- Security Neglected for
Symbolic Gestures
Banditry and insurgency ravage states like Zamfara, Kaduna, and Borno. Yet governors opt for symbolic spending in flyovers, pilgrimages, and photo-op events over empowering local security despite rising insecurity and community trauma.
Prestige Over People: A Deadly Trade-Off
These examples reveal a clear pattern: governors prioritise prestige and short-term optics over enduring human development. A foreign scholarship can not quell thirst. A Hajj flight doesn’t heal a sick child. A mass wedding doesn’t equip widows with tools for survival.
The Way Forward: People Before Prestige
- Arewa must demand a new order of spending priorities:
- Water before flyovers → Every community deserves clean water.
- Hospitals before pilgrimages → Health is a right, not a privilege.
- Schools before scholarships abroad → invest in teachers, classrooms, and materials.
- Empowerment before mass weddings → give widows and women economic independence.
- Justice before selective palliatives → relief must be fair, not politicised.
Security before luxury → Lives must come before prestige.
Conclusion
The mismanagement of public funds by Arewa governors is not just a financial problem. It is a moral failure. Every wasted naira is a stolen future. For too long, leaders have chosen prestige over people, while citizens remain thirsty, sick, uneducated, and unsafe.
But history teaches us that no region can rise on misplaced priorities. The North must demand accountability, transparency, and people-centred governance. Our leaders must remember that their duty is not to build monuments for themselves but to build lives for their people.
Because the true legacy of a governor will not be in the bridges he built, the pilgrims he sponsored, or the mass weddings he staged. It will be in the children who can read, the women who are empowered, the sick who receive care, and the communities that live in peace.
Arewa’s FUTURE will only CHANGE when its LEADERS finally put PEOPLE before PRESTIGE.
