The terrifying videos were not from Hollywood movies but scenes from Northern Nigeria during the #EndBadGovernance protest. The so-called protesters invaded a Government House, vandalised public facilities, looted an ICT training centre, carted away a Police station signpost, invaded banks, destroyed a mosque, hijacked a Personnel Armour Carrier, flew foreign flags, sought foreign intervention, and chanted “Yara Me Kuke so; Wiwi Mukeso!” in Hausa. The latter means, “Children, what do you want? Cannabis (marijuana) is what we want!”
The ‘protest’ in the North is akin to a coup targeted at Arewa leaders. As a Northerner, I feel ashamed to be represented by these scenes displayed by our children and youths. However, this is not the first time such incidents have occurred in the region. The only difference this last time was that there were no reported mass killings, unlike similar past incidents.
In my article, “Killing in the Name of the Devil”, written after a similar act of riotous protest in Maiduguri, Borno State, in 2006, I pointed out that the marauders’ acts of violence were not in the name of the Almighty God or any just cause, but they were enacted in the name of the devil, and as possibly influenced by undesirable godfathers, selfish elites, drug addiction, illiteracy, and endemic poverty. Today, Borno State is regarded as the epicentre of terrorism in Nigeria.
Rather than protesting injustice and the lackadaisical attitudes of their leaders, the people in the North often condone the excesses of their elites. When the massacre of the Shi’ites, including pregnant women and kids, by soldiers, occurred in Kaduna in December 2015, many young miscreants sought recourse in looting the corpses on the streets and the assets of the victims. Yet, the Arewa elite and the youths kept silent, without any protest, because the then Nigerian President and principal security chiefs were Northerners. Kaduna today hosts the dens of kidnapping kingpins and is the location of recurrent ethnic flares of violence.
The people never protested against terrorism in the North-East, banditry in the North-West, or the farmer-herder conflicts in the North-Central. They never protested over the endemic corruption of the political leaders, especially governors, who receive billions of naira from the Federation Account and utilise a chunk of these to address the relentless insecurity in the region through the so-called security votes.
I often wonder about the correlation between security challenges and security votes as they grow together like the Siamese twins. Insecurity has become a booming business in Arewa for the perpetrators and the humanitarian groups and actors, with international bodies and Non-Governmental Organisations competing for space to exhibit their concerns as they concentrate substantial financial resources on programmes in those areas.
Yet, the activities of undesirable elements, including riotous protesters, have deterred local entrepreneurs from investing in the region for fear of disruption and the destruction of their businesses. Even the wealthiest Northerners would instead invest elsewhere than in the region.
Consequently, there is a widening gap between the Northern and Southern states regarding development. For instance, in the last Annual State Viability Index (ASVI) produced by Economic Confidential, Lagos generated more revenue than all the 16 Northern states combined in 2022, with its internally generated revenue (IGR) of N651 billion constituting 176 per cent of its receipt from the Federation Account of N370 billion. Even a neighbouring state, Ogun, generated an IGR of N120 billion, 106 per cent of its federal allocation of N113 billion.
Most states in the North, especially where the so-called hunger protesters were calling for a coup and foreign interventions in domestic affairs, hardly generate 20% of what they collect from the Federal Government as internally generated revenue. For instance, Kano, which received N226bn from the Federation Account in 2022, generated N42.5bn internally, translating to 18.7 per cent of the Manna from Abuja. Similarly, Katsina, the home state of the immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari, only made an IGR of N13bn after it collected N165bn from the Federation Account, which translates to less than 8 per cent of the free money from the central government.
As a panellist at the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) discussion on matters of Local Voices, I underscored the pivotal role of the media and citizens in upholding accountability among state governors and local government authorities concerning the substantial resources they receive monthly from the central government.
With references to Northern states, I disclosed how billions of naira are allocated to each state while their local governments (LGs) also receive hundreds of millions of naira in monthly disbursements from Abuja. I cited the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) distributions in June 2024 as example: Borno State received N10.8 billion, while its 27 LGs shared an additional N8.7 billion; Kaduna State collected N12 billion, while its 23 LGs received N9 billion; Kano State was given N15.4 billion, whilst its 44 LGs received N15.3 billion; and Katsina State got N11.4 billion, whereas its 34 LGs shared N11 billion among themselves.
Each state’s local government received over N300 million monthly, some exceeding N400 million. Given these substantial monthly allocations, the protesters and rioters must be aware of the humongous releases to their respective states.
With the statutory financial interventions, it is pathetic that the Arewa region still accounts for high poverty rates (over 70% of the population living below the poverty line), High unemployment and underemployment among youth, Low Human Development Index (HDI), Low literacy and education levels, especially among girls and high food insecurity, particularly in conflict-affected areas.
Despite being richly endowed with natural resources, the region fails to capitalise on its various potentials. With vast agricultural land and livestock, the North can provide food security for the nation. Its hydroelectric power and solar energy potentials can drive industrialisation. Its forests and mineral resources offer significant tourism opportunities to attract foreign investment. However, some communities remain ungoverned and vulnerable to non-state actors because our leadership prioritizes political patronage over empowering the youth with modern skills.
We must acknowledge some notable peaceful protesters, like a young lady whose heart-wrenching testimony in a video at the hunger protest moved me deeply. Severely hungry, sick, and unable to afford food or medication, she spoke out for many suffering in silence while appealing to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to hear their voices and act.
Despite efforts by NSA Nuhu Ribadu, CDS Gen. Chris Musa, Information Minister Idris Malagi, and others to contain the recent hunger protest, there are concerns that future agitations may be spontaneous and unpredictable, catching authorities off guard.
Northern leaders must, therefore, be advised to address insecurity, harness regional resources for economic growth and reduce overdependence on oil revenue. Rampant oil thefts and volatility in other mineral-producing regions highlight the need for proactive measures to ensure stability.
What would happen if the Federation Account allocations to states were stopped or a conflict broke out that prevented the extraction and production of oil in the country?
Yushau Shuaib is the author of “Award-Winning Crisis Communication Strategies.”
www.YAShuaib.com yashuaib@yashuaib.com

The 10-day nationwide #EndBadGovernance protests that end today, known by the reduplicative compound “Zanga-Zanga” in Hausaphone northern Nigeria, have ruptured the coalition that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu managed to build with a portion of the northern Nigerian Muslim political establishment since 2014, which put Muhammadu Buhari in power in 2015 and 2019 and him in 2023.
But this Zanga-Zanga-inspired rupture also reveals the initial precarity and fragility of the strange-bedfellows coalition. Buhari and Tinubu were previously fierce political adversaries who distrusted each other’s motives and undermined each other. Their alliance was more accurately a political scaffold that papered over their contradictions for a temporary gain, which was the ouster of Goodluck Jonathan from power.
Tinubu’s associates and acolytes in the Southwest, who said they protected Buhari from revolt in their region even when he bungled governance with uncommon ineptitude, are understandably miffed at the rawness, fierce intensity, and undiluted anti-Tinubu fervor of the protests in northern Nigeria.
They are wondering why Buhari, his associates, and even the APC establishment in the North didn’t return the favor. The answers are obvious, but people in power are often blind to the obvious, especially if the obvious is disquieting.
First, Buhari and his supporters know that the Tinubu group, which had a tight leash on the Southwest political space, didn’t protect Buhari from the consequences of his infernal incompetence out of any high-minded considerations. They did so because they needed power after Buhari’s term in office. It was unvarnished calculative opportunism.
Since Buhari’s people have no expectation of any kind of requital from Tinubu, like Tinubu did from them, they felt no obligation to protect or explain away Tinubu’s own hard-hearted incompetence. The chase often stops after a conquest. Men who woo women can relate to this sentiment.
Second, the misery that Tinubu’s simultaneous policies of never-before-seen astronomical petrol price increase and devaluation of the naira unleashed on the country are felt more deeply in the North than in any part of the country because of the preexisting multidimensional poverty in the region and the pervading insecurity that makes farming almost impossible.
Money is now both hard to find and worthless when it is found, and food is both hard to find and unaffordable when it is found. That is an unprecedentedly profound, not to mention unsurvivable, existential torment.
Two days after the #EndBadGovernance protests started, I told someone that many people in the North have been rendered so desolate, so destitute, and so despondent by the economic crunch that they are looking to cash in on the protests to commit suicide by police bullets because Islam forbids suicide.
Islam teaches that committing suicide guarantees an unfettered passage to the hottest depths of hellfire in the hereafter. I said many people who couldn’t survive the pain and humiliation of perpetual hunger might tempt security forces to shoot them so they could end it all and not fear that they would provoke the wrath of their Creator for committing suicide.
Of course, this is twisted thinking because a famous hadith, which every Muslim who took Islamic Studies in secondary school knows, says “Actions shall be judged according to intention.”
Well, my predictions turned out to be accurate. A friend shared a video of scores of protesters in a northern city chanting, “da yunwa ta kashe mu, da ma bullet ya kashe mu” (rough translation: “Instead of dying of hunger, we would rather be killed by a bullet”) as they confronted gun-wielding military and police officers.
There is also the viral video of protesters bursting into the Zamfara State Government House in Gusau and defying, even daring, menacing, gun-toting soldiers who tried to stop them. Several such scenes have been replicated throughout the North.
The mistake the government is making is to dismiss the protests as entirely politically motivated. They are not. Even if they wanted, Buhari and his associates couldn’t stop the protests both because the shelf life of Buhari’s “magic” has expired (his own house was besieged in Daura, and he had been pelted with stones while he was in power in cities like Kano and Maiduguri where he had been idolized) and because the extent of anguish people are going through now is unappeasable.
Apart from the usual criminals of opportunity (who exploit every unrest to steal and destroy), the vast majority of protesters think their only hope of living is to risk death and push back at policies that kill them slowly but surely. You can’t persuade people who have nothing to lose by dying.
That was why American author Dan Groat pointed out in his 2014 book titled In Monarchs and Mendicants, “Not interested in scarin’ anybody, but people with good sense are afraid of a man with nothin’ to lose.” Lance Conrad echoed this in his book The Price of Nobility when he said, “Only a fool would underestimate a man with nothing to lose.”
People who weren’t exempt from the rage of protesters can’t stop protesters from protesting.
The self-inflicted attenuation of Tinubu’s political capital in the North plays into the old debate in the Southwest about the best coalitional strategy to attain and retain power for the Yoruba.
The Chief Obafemi Awolowo strategy, which Afenifere still believes in, sees the Muslim North as a competitor and not an ally. The Awo strategy for getting power is to build an alliance between the entire South and Northern Christians.
But the Chief Ladoke Akintola template sees the Muslim North as a strategic partner in light of the deep historical and cultural ties that bind Yoruba people and several linguistic, ethnic, and cultural groups in the Muslim North, such as Borgu, Nupe, Igala, and Hausa people. (Read my October 9, 2021, column titled “Arewa and Oduduwa More Alike than Unlike.”) This is hardly surprising because even though Akintola was a Christian, he was from Ogbomoso whose traditional ruler traces ancestral roots to Borgu.
Chief MKO Abiola—and now President Tinubu—subscribe to the Akintola template. Abiola was briefly vindicated when he won the June 12, 1993, presidential election with enormous support from the North, including Kano, his opponent’s home state.
But the revocation of his epochal electoral triumph by a Northern military head of state—and the decidedly ethnic and regional character the fight for and the opposition to his mandate later took—appeared to justify the distrust of the Muslim North by the Awo group, which nonetheless gave full-throated support to Abiola to reclaim his mandate.
Tinubu, undeterred by Abiola’s experience, reinvented the Akintola template. It’s as if he wanted to prove that he could tread the same path and get to the destination that Abiola couldn’t get to. That must be why he called his presidential bid “Renewed Hope.” Abiola’s was “Hope.” Like Abiola, he chose a Muslim running mate. And, like Abiola, his running mate is a Kanuri man from Borno.
With the Muslim North now souring on him only one year into his first term and the unlikelihood of his ever recovering whatever goodwill he had from the region if he continues with his economic policies that push people to the brink of the existential precipice, the Awo/Afenifere group may be having the last laugh.
So, what should he do? The best option is to discard the IMF/World Bank neoliberal policies he’s enamored with (which have never worked anywhere in the world) and embrace Awolowo’s welfarist capitalist template of governance that puts the development and wellbeing of people at the center of policies. That may restore his goodwill with the North—and even earn him more support elsewhere.
The other options are non-starters, but I’ll mention them anyway. Like Chief Olusegun Obasanjo who won his first term with the support of the Muslim North, but who later used the Awo/Afenifere template to get a second term, Tinubu can court the Christian North and galvanize the South. Goodluck Jonathan used this template in 2011 and won.
The problem is that if Peter Obi runs in 2027, and I don’t see any reason why he won’t, Tinubu won’t be able to galvanize the South into a unified voting bloc. And, although the worst fears of his Muslim-Muslim ticket among Christians haven’t materialized, northern Christians are unlikely to embrace him wholeheartedly, however hard he tries to woo them.
In other words, Tinubu is cooked, as Gen Zs say. Anything short of bringing down the cost of petrol, restoring the value of the naira, and making everyday things affordable will doom Tinubu’s first term and deny him a second term because he is now effectively a political orphan.