A Crisis of Leadership and Education in Northern Nigeria
The 2025 national university entrance examinations have delivered a shocking reality: not a single student from the top ten in the entire country came from Northern Nigeria. This is more than just a statistic—it is a stark reflection of six decades of leadership failure. It is a report card that reads ‘catastrophic failure’ for an entire region.
The North is in turmoil, and the architects of this crisis are not faceless forces but the very leaders entrusted with its development: political, traditional, and bureaucratic elites. The 13 million Almajiri children wandering the streets of Kano, Katsina, and Sokoto are not a product of divine will; they are the result of neglect, selfishness, and a prioritization of power over people.
To understand how we arrived at this point, we must look back. Pre-colonial Northern Nigeria was once a hub of learning, with a well-regulated Tsangaya (Qur’anic) system that attracted scholars across West Africa. However, British colonial policies dismantled this system by defunding indigenous education and promoting Western education in the South, creating a developmental gap. After independence, our leaders had a choice: launch an educational Marshall Plan or consolidate control over an uneducated populace. They chose the latter, fracturing the region into dependent fiefdoms rather than investing in human capital.
This decision has led to an educational genocide. The Almajiri system, once a path to knowledge, has become a network of child neglect and exploitation. These children are not in school; they are on the streets, vulnerable and unprepared for the modern world. Worse, they are being recruited by insurgents and bandits, leading to a cycle of violence that we now spend billions to combat.
Looking at Nigeria’s development map, the truth is undeniable. Southern states and the Middle Belt, such as Plateau and Benue, have significantly fewer out-of-school children. This is not a coincidence but a direct result of cultural and religious priorities placed on formal education—priorities that our leadership has failed to instill and fund. While their children attend schools, ours beg at intersections. While their elites build universities, our elites build palaces.
The failure goes beyond poor governance; it is a systemic issue of rewarding failure. We elect local government chairmen and councillors without qualifications, who turn councils into personal fiefdoms, squandering funds meant for schools and clinics. Then, in a display of hypocrisy, we blame the President for appointing the “wrong people” to represent the North. We had the opportunity to protest and present credible alternatives, but we chose not to. Why? Because the system we built thrives on patronage, not merit.
In the end, the wrong people represent us from the council to the federal cabinet. And yet, we complain about not getting our fair share. The problem lies within us. As long as we choose and reward the wrong people for positions of power, we are actively building our own underdevelopment and signing our own death warrant.
The insecurity funded by security votes is a direct product of the uneducated, hopeless youth we abandoned. Our businesses fail because the Northern market is poor and insecure. Our political relevance is eroding because an uneducated populace can be manipulated for a season but cannot produce the leaders or intellectual capital needed to compete in a knowledge-driven world. The chaos is no longer at our gates; it is in our living rooms, kidnapping our kin and threatening our assets.
But there is a path to redemption, though it demands sacrifice and radical change. We must declare a Five-Year Educational State of Emergency across all Northern states. This requires a radical commitment of at least 40-50% of every state’s budget to education. We need a Northern Governors’ Performance Accountability Council with real teeth—one that publishes scorecards naming and shaming failing leaders and ties federal allocations to verifiable results in the classroom.
Crucially, we must admit that a one-size-fits-all national curriculum has failed our context. We are too far behind to follow the same pace. During this emergency period, we must excuse ourselves from the rigid national curriculum and mandate our own experts to develop a Northern Educational Curriculum (NEC). This curriculum would integrate core literacy and numeracy with vocational skills, digital literacy, and a modernized Islamic studies syllabus. This is not about lowering standards, but about creating a relevant and accelerated pathway for our children to compete nationally and meet the economic needs of the North.
The Almajiri system must be transformed, not abandoned. We must take those 13 million children off the streets and place them in modern, integrated schools using this new curriculum. We need a ‘Northern Teachers Corps’ to recruit and train the best minds to teach this generation.
The 13 million out-of-school children are not just a problem; they are the greatest untapped asset the North possesses. If educated under a system designed for their success, they could power an economic renaissance. The choice is yours. You can continue on the path of self-interest and be remembered by history as the generation that presided over the collapse of a great region. Or, you can choose redemption. You can invest in the child in Rijiyar Zaki and secure a legacy that will outlast any bulletproof car or foreign bank account.
The time for excuses is over. The youth are watching, and history is waiting. The final act of your leadership will be judged by what you do next.
