North will be worse hit if Nigeria breaks up - Sanusi

The Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, has called on Northern leaders to devote more resources to the devel­opment of the region.

He warned that in the event of the country break­ing up as is being canvassed in some quarters, the North will be worse affected.

According to the mon­arch, other regions like the South-South, the South East and the South West, es­pecially Lagos, have the re­sources to remain afloat if the unexpected happens.

The former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor spoke on Wednesday at the Kaduna State’s 2nd invest­ment summit titled: “Pro­moting Investment Amidst Economic Challenges.” Sanusi remarked that the North East and North West were the poorest re­gions in the country.

He said: “If we break Nigeria into components, Northern Nigeria will be the poorest.”

The Emir cautioned that the oil-rich Niger Delta, com­mercially-viable Lagos and business-oriented South East should not be used to mir­ror the living standards of the North.

Sanusi appealed to Mus­lims to embrace education and stop using religion and culture to set the North backward.

He was joined at the event in the appraisal of develop­ments in the North by the Sul­tan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III.

The Kano monarch de­cried the face-off between the Executive, Legislature and Ju­dicial arms of government and appealed to the trio to stop playing politics with the lives of Nigerians.

Sanusi noted that the Na­tional Assembly and the Exec­utive arm of government, rath­er than concentrate on how to tackle the country’s problems, were wasting time on a need­less ego contest.

He said: “We are talking and thinking of how to come out of the difficult economic environment facing the coun­try; the Executive, the Nation­al Assembly and the Judiciary are busy fighting one anoth­er on political issues ahead of 2019.”

Sanusi reminded his au­dience that “if you have been reading and watching news for the last one month, the big and concerned news politically is about leadership, but unfortu­nately, the conversation is not about electricity, infrastruc­ture, education and health­care.”

“All the conversation is about the National Assem­bly, the Executive and the Ju­diciary; conflict between this politician and that politician as well as confirmation of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) boss.”

While regretting that with­in the period in review “there has been no serious conversa­tion around the people,” Sanu­si said that the problem with the political class is that “it has made more noise at the expense of good governance.”

He congratulated Gover­nor Nasir el-Rufai for organ­ising the forum, which he de­scribed as timely.