Lawmakers decry North-West economic decline

The Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Barau Jibrin, and the Chairman of the Senate Committee on the North-West Development Commission, Senator Babangida Hussaini, on Saturday called for a coordinated economic rescue of the North-West, warning that years of fragmented development efforts had deepened the region’s challenges.

They spoke at the North-West Development Summit held at the Umaru Musa Yar’Adua Conference Centre, Kaduna, where lawmakers, development experts and other stakeholders gathered to deliberate on the future of the region.

The summit, themed “Advancing a Coordinated Regional Development for North West Nigeria,” served as a platform for confronting what speakers described as the core problem of the zone — not lack of resources, but lack of coordination.

Barau said the North-West must deliberately reposition itself to influence Nigeria’s economic direction by strengthening regional institutions rather than relying on isolated and uncoordinated state interventions.

According to him, the establishment of the North-West Development Commission was a strategic response to decades of disjointed development programmes that failed to deliver lasting and system-wide impact across the region.

He noted that despite being Nigeria’s largest agricultural belt and home to tens of millions of people, the North-West continues to battle insecurity, infrastructure deficits, youth unemployment, climate stress and weak access to social services.

“These challenges do not respect state boundaries; therefore, our solutions must rise above them,” Barau said, stressing that the summit was a call for political coordination and policy coherence.

The Deputy Senate President assured participants that the National Assembly would provide the legislative backing and oversight required for the NWDC to succeed under President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda.

He urged stakeholders to move beyond speeches and communiqués, warning that leadership would ultimately be judged by outcomes. “History will not remember how many meetings we held, but how many lives we changed,” he said.

In his welcome address, Senator Hussaini painted a stark picture of a region that once powered Nigeria’s economy through groundnut pyramids, cotton, textiles and hides and skin production but is now weighed down by poverty and unemployment.

Hussaini said that although the North-West contributes over 40 per cent of Nigeria’s agricultural output and hosts some of the largest markets in West Africa, it still ranks high in poverty indices and out-of-school children statistics.

He attributed the decline to development efforts carried out in silos — state by state and agency by agency — resulting in duplication, waste and spending without scale or lasting impact.

According to him, insecurity alone now drains the regional economy of billions of naira annually through disrupted farming cycles, lost productivity and capital flight.

Hussaini said the creation of the NWDC and the Ministry of Regional Development marked a reset, acknowledging that regional problems demand coordinated regional solutions.

He outlined four priority pillars for the North-West’s recovery: security and stability, infrastructure and connectivity, agriculture and industrial value addition, and human capital development.

“No economy grows where farmers cannot farm and traders cannot trade,” he said, calling for investments in transport corridors, energy, irrigation, storage facilities and broadband infrastructure.

He added that processing even a fraction of the grains, tomatoes, cotton, hides and livestock produced in the region would generate massive employment and significantly expand the regional economy.

Chairman of the occasion and former Vice President, Arch. Mohammed Namadi Sambo, reinforced the urgency of action, saying the NWDC must move from planning to tangible impact in people’s lives.

Sambo said the Act establishing the commission provides a framework for coordinated infrastructure development, economic growth, social transformation and environmental sustainability, but warned that laws alone would not deliver results.

He cited abandoned power projects in Kaduna, including a 250-megawatt thermal plant and a 30-megawatt Gurara hydropower project left idle for over a decade, as examples of the cost of poor coordination.

The former Vice President also referenced a delayed multi-purpose dam expected to generate 40 megawatts of electricity, irrigate 35,000 hectares of farmland and supply water to Kaduna metropolis, urging that such projects be unlocked through partnerships.

Culled from punch