Northern Nigeria and Its Confused Youths and Clerics -By Abdulazeez Alhassan

I am much concerned about the northern youths and their clerics. This is because, their stance and debate on critical national issues, and challenges that need cogent attention are very low and not encouraging.

Challenges in northern Nigeria, have manifested in widespread poverty, hunger, insurgency, mutual suspicion and disunity. The case of Hanifa's grousome killing, the missing Dadiyata, the  Kaduna non-stop massacre, not to mention those of Katsina, Zamfara and Sokoto. The kidnapped students from Kaduna, Zamfara and Kebbi. The whole of the north-west is engulfed in an imbroglio, which only God knows when it shall end.  All these are maladies that have caused dementia of one form or the other in the mental faculties of these youths, such that these meladies when combined  together, have lowered the thinking faculty of the northern youths, which in turn, made them to be unserious and easily forget such challenges; thereby making them to look for ways to lessen the impact of the suffering on their mental realm. They shy away from analysing and discussing the challenges bedevilling their region. As it is now, northern youths tend to lessen the impact of their problems on unserious issues in the social media, with the term "comrade". This term came to be the agenda of discussion for almost a week, through ridiculing the term, and bashing banter to those bearing the name. This is called cultural hegemony which is maintained through social institutions.

Politicians are successful in maintaining their status quo, through hegemony. Hegemony which is the dominance of some social group(ruling class) over others(working class) is maintained in northern Nigeria through religious and social institutions. The ruling class always develop a hegemonic culture using ideology to propagate their norms and values. They are successful in setting a strong institutions that the ruling class may not escape. Example of the "comrade issue, earlier discussed above, interfaith issue, which will be discussed later, are all cultural and religious hegemony respectively.

Our clerics are also not left out in this battlefield. They tend to neglect addressing our problems, and call on the government to quickly and swiftly set measures, so as to curtail further devastation of problems. Instead, they choose to set "Interfaith" as topic of discussion. Additionally, they are busy bashing and defecting their counterparts on their sermon and tafsir. 

Therefore, in this sense, one can infer that the northern politicians are successful in hegemonising the region through cultural and religious institutions.

Northerners, where do we keep our senses? Why do we tend to be quiet on our problems? Why do we behave like this? Are we really advocating for good governance and democracy? Is this how we want the region to continue in the subsequent years?, Then history will never forgive us.

Abdulazeez Alhassan, Rigasa (08132888688)