The children of the poor you fail to train will never let your children have peace
In the forests and villages of Northern Nigeria, a wound older than the current violence has begun to surface: not the insurgency itself, but the reckoning with what made it possible. Retired generals gathered in Kaduna to rebuke those who named the North as the source of Nigeria's security collapse, yet voices from within the region — physicians, historians, the ghost of Awolowo's warning — insist the accusation holds. What is unfolding is less a security crisis than a crisis of accountability, where a generation of leaders must confront whether the abandoned children of their own neglect have now returned, armed.
- The murder of retired General Rabe Abubakar in Katsina captivity made visceral what statistics had long obscured — the North's elite are no longer insulated from the violence their governance helped incubate.
- A coalition of retired Northern military officers convened in Kaduna to condemn commentators who linked the region's leadership failures to Nigeria's security collapse, calling such narratives ethnically divisive.
- But the sharpest rebuttal came from inside: a Northern physician publicly documented how governors spending billions on mass marriages had simultaneously built a 'street kid factory' supplying Boko Haram and bandit networks with recruits.
- Awolowo's sixty-year-old prophecy — that failing to educate the poor would ensure their children would never let the wealthy rest — now reads less like political rhetoric and more like a completed forecast.
- The region stands at a crossroads where its anger at being named may either ignite genuine reform or harden into another cycle of denial, with the violence continuing regardless of which path its leaders choose.
The wound in Northern Nigeria is not only the bloodshed — it is the moment of being seen. When retired generals assembled in Kaduna to rebuke columnist Lasisi Olagunju for writing that the North would soon destroy Nigeria, their objection was framed as a defense against divisive narratives. But beneath the protest lay an uncomfortable recognition: the charge was not easily dismissed.
General Rabe Abubakar, abducted near Matazu in Katsina State and murdered in captivity, became a symbol of how thoroughly the violence had penetrated even the region's own elite. The insurgents and bandits carving out territory in Northern forests are not foreign invaders — they are sons of the soil, products of a system that produced them and then abandoned them.
The most devastating critique came not from the South but from Dr. Zainab Suleiman Buhari, a Northern physician writing in the Daily Trust. She described Northern governors lavishing billions on mass marriages while presiding over what she called a 'street kid factory' — children born into neglect and funneled directly into Boko Haram, banditry, and criminal networks. Terrorism, she argued, does not begin with ideology. It begins with hopelessness.
This was a truth Obafemi Awolowo had articulated more than six decades earlier, warning that Northern resistance to education would produce poverty, instability, and eventual collapse. By 1955 he had already delivered free primary education across the Western Region. His words — that the poor children leaders fail to train will never allow their children peace — have graduated from prophecy to chronicle.
Northern Nigeria now faces the consequences of a feudal inheritance reinforced across generations: not external siege but internal decay made undeniable. The region's anger at being named is real and politically potent. Whether that anger becomes the ignition for transformation or simply another refusal to look inward remains the question on which its future turns.
The anger in Northern Nigeria runs deep, but not for the reason outsiders might assume. Yes, the region bleeds. Yes, sons have turned against their own soil, carving out kingdoms in thick forests where they prey on their neighbors. General Rabe Abubakar, a retired military officer, was abducted near Matazu in Katsina State and murdered while in captivity—a loss that stung the region's elite. But the real wound, the one that has Northern leaders convening press conferences and issuing sharp rebuttals, is something else entirely: they have been named for what they are.
Last week in Kaduna, a group of retired military officers—Ambassador A. Mohammed Musawa, Air Commodore Yusuf Anas, Brigadier General Maharazu Tsiga, Ambassador Ibrahim Usman Gafai, and Brigadier General Abdulkadir Abubakar among them—gathered to push back against what they called selective outrage. They objected to commentators, particularly columnist Lasisi Olagunju, who had written that Northern Nigeria would soon kill Nigeria itself. Olagunju's argument was surgical: crime may have no ethnicity, but the environment that breeds it does. A desert remains a desert even when it contains a few oases. The generals' complaint was that such narratives were divisive, that they unfairly attributed Nigeria's security crisis to a single region. But beneath their objection lay something more uncomfortable—the recognition that the accusation, however framed, contained truth they could not easily refute.
The real reckoning came not from the South but from within. Dr. Zainab Suleiman Buhari, a public health physician from the North itself, published a letter in the Daily Trust that cut deeper than any external critique. She pointed to Northern governors spending billions on mass marriages while their region incubated what she called a "street kid factory"—children produced but never raised, the very recruitment pool for Boko Haram, bandits, and cults. "Terrorism does not start with ideology," she wrote. "It starts with hopelessness." The boys who became insurgents were not PhDs. They were the abandoned.
This was not new wisdom. More than six decades earlier, Chief Obafemi Awolowo had warned Northern leaders that their resistance to Western education would breed poverty, insecurity, and social collapse. Awolowo believed that education was not a service but the foundation of everything—political consciousness, economic progress, social stability. He called it the development of the human mind. By 1955, he had delivered free primary education across the Western Region. His famous declaration haunts the present: "The children of the poor you fail to train will never let your children have peace." The prophecy has arrived.
What Northern Nigeria faces now is not external invasion but internal decay made visible. The fief system of medieval feudalism, inherited by the region's founding fathers and reinforced by decades of successive leaders, has collapsed inward. The violence consuming the North comes not from strangers but from sons it nurtured, tolerated, or failed to restrain. Yet the deepest irritation is not the missing finger but the witnesses counting them aloud. The region is trapped between two truths: that it has failed its own people, and that the rest of Nigeria has begun to notice. The anger is real. The question now is whether it will become the catalyst for change or merely another chapter in a long refusal to see.
Citações Notáveis
Terrorism does not start with ideology. It starts with hopelessness. Boko Haram, bandits, cults do not recruit PhDs. They recruit boys who were produced but never raised.— Dr. Zainab Suleiman Buhari, public health physician
Crime may have no ethnicity, but that does not relieve us of the duty to identify the environment that breeds and sustains it. A desert does not cease to be a desert because it contains a few oases.— Lasisi Olagunju, Nigerian Tribune columnist
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does the article say Northern Nigeria is angry at being named rather than at the violence itself?
Because naming implies judgment, and judgment implies responsibility. The violence can be blamed on insurgents, on external forces, on bad luck. But when someone says the North created the conditions for its own destruction, that's harder to deflect.
The generals rejected the idea that the North is uniquely responsible for Nigeria's security crisis. Is that a fair objection?
Fair in the sense that crime has no ethnicity, yes. But the article's point—through Olagunju and Dr. Buhari—is that you can acknowledge crime is everywhere while also acknowledging that certain regions created the soil where it grows fastest.
What does the Okètè story really mean in this context?
It's about timing. The rat had chances to cry for help early, but pride kept it silent. By the time it finally called out, the hunter was already there. The North is realizing its danger late—after decades of educational neglect, after the children it failed to raise have become the insurgents it now fights.
Chief Awolowo's warning was from the 1950s. Why didn't Northern leaders listen then?
Because warnings about the future are always easier to ignore than the present. And because admitting the need for change meant admitting the old system—feudalism, religious authority, inherited power—was insufficient. That's a harder pill than any external threat.
Is Dr. Buhari's letter a turning point, or just another voice in the noise?
It matters because it comes from inside. When a Northerner tells the North it has failed, the usual defenses—that outsiders don't understand, that it's all politics—collapse. The truth becomes harder to dismiss.
What happens next?
That's the open question. The anger could become fuel for real change—investment in education, in social services, in raising the children being produced but not raised. Or it could calcify into defensiveness. The article suggests the region is at a choice point.