The North West’s Squandered Power
By ABDULRAUF ALIYU
LAST week, I provided a detailed overview of the 2025 Phillips Consulting State Performance Index (pSPI), a report that weighs both hard data and citizen perception to assess the performance of Nigeria’s states. Today marks the beginning of a six-week series in which we take a more surgical look, region by region, starting with the North West.
The North West is the largest political bloc in Nigeria, a region whose electoral heft can sway presidential contests and whose political elite have for decades shaped the country’s destiny. Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, and Zamfara together command more votes than many nations have citizens. This influence is not a recent phenomenon; it has been entrenched since the early post-independence era, when the region’s political machinery helped set the tone for federal governance. Yet the report cuts through all that history with surgical precision.
The pSPI measures 70 percent objective data and 30 percent citizen perception. It asks a disarmingly simple question: are people better off today than they were yesterday? The North West’s collective answer, measured through hard numbers and the lived verdict of its people, is troubling. The region’s performance reveals a widening chasm between political dominance and developmental outcomes.
Jigawa’s Quiet Exception
Jigawa is the lone bright spot, an outlier in an otherwise disappointing set of results. Born in 1991 from Kano’s eastern districts, it inherited no great industrial assets or political dynasties. Yet it ranks 8th nationally and first in citizen perception. The reason is not mystical. Jigawa’s leadership has embraced quiet, incremental governance – prioritising rural electrification, functioning primary healthcare, clean water access, and basic education reform over grandiose projects.
In villages, residents speak less of political slogans and more of tangible services. Here, a school roof replaced in the dry season is more valuable than a stadium promised for the next election cycle. This approach recalls the disciplined merchant republics of Renaissance Europe – Florence in its artisanal prime, Geneva in its civic order – small states that prized functional systems over spectacles. Jigawa’s consistency offers a template the rest of the North West ignores at its peril. Yet one well-governed state cannot carry an entire region.
The Fall of the Giants
Kano’s decline is the most glaring. Once the industrial and commercial nerve centre of the North, it should be the Lagos of the region – a magnet for investment, innovation, and regional trade. Instead, it has plummeted to 30th in the pSPI rankings. Rural insecurity has severed supply chains; urban infrastructure crumbles under congestion and neglect; governance transparency has eroded. The once-vibrant Kurmi Market, which for centuries drew traders from across West Africa, now contends with logistical chaos and dwindling competitiveness.
Kano’s situation is like that of the Habsburg Empire in its later years – resting on past glory while failing to adapt to modern economic realities. Political attention remains fixated on factional battles rather than structural reforms. The cost of this drift is not abstract: it is measured in lost jobs, stagnant commerce, and the frustration of a youthful population with no outlet for its energy.
Kaduna’s case is more complex. It has pursued reforms in education, fiscal management, and public service digitisation. On paper, it appears to be the North West’s reformist capital. Yet deep political polarisation and persistent insecurity, especially in its rural districts, have weakened public confidence. Like nineteenth-century Prussia, it is modernising at the centre while fighting constant instability at the edges. The pSPI captures this duality – solid scores in fiscal indicators, but lower ones in perception. Reform without broad citizen buy-in remains fragile.
Katsina, home to Nigeria’s immediate past president, has not capitalised on its proximity to power. Security crises – particularly banditry in rural communities – continue to strangle agriculture and commerce. Capital projects feel scattered, lacking the sequencing to create systemic change. In this, Katsina resembles Austria-Hungary before World War I – high in ceremonial prestige but slow to modernise, leaving it exposed to the shocks of an unpredictable world.
Kebbi’s much-celebrated “rice revolution” once promised to make it an agricultural powerhouse. But monoculture is a dangerous bet. Without diversification, processing industries, and climate adaptation, its gains have stalled. Education and healthcare indicators are weak, threatening the sustainability of its agricultural base. Kebbi risks following the path of the American South before industrialisation – exporting raw produce while importing manufactured goods, a model that keeps wealth elsewhere.
Where Prestige Masks Decay
Sokoto’s leaders still command national respect, but the state’s local governance is another story. Its fiscal base is narrow, infrastructure gaps remain wide, and public services underperform. It evokes the late Ottoman provinces – still basking in the glow of historical prestige, yet hollowed out by administrative neglect. Schools limp along without resources, health centres struggle for basic supplies, and the civil service lacks the drive for innovation. Citizens, through the pSPI’s perception scores, are signalling a loss of patience.
Zamfara’s plight is the most acute. Ranking near the bottom, it suffers from chronic insecurity, illegal mining, and mass displacement. This is not just a law-and-order issue; it is a collapse of governance. It mirrors the Balkan territories under the fading Ottoman Empire – nominally governed but effectively abandoned to local chaos. Without simultaneous investment in security and development, Zamfara risks a demographic and economic hollowing-out from which it may not recover.
The Perception Problem and the Cost of Drift
Across the North West, the same pattern repeats: dependence on federal allocations, governance as patronage, and the conflation of political proximity with developmental progress. In the 1960s, the region’s groundnut pyramids, textile mills, and industrial parks were built through coordinated vision, robust local government, and investment in human capital. That era’s leaders understood that prestige meant little without production. Today, that cohesion has vanished.
The pSPI’s dual structure – hard performance data and citizen perception – matters deeply here. Low perception scores reveal a crisis of trust. Even where services exist, citizens often feel excluded from planning, ignored in execution, or underserved in quality. Governance is not only about building infrastructure; it is about building legitimacy. History offers the cautionary tale of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, once a major European power, which fell to partition because its leaders mistook formal prestige for institutional strength. By the time they realised the depth of internal decay, it was too late.
To arrest this drift, the North West must confront some hard truths. Governance must be digitised to improve efficiency and close leakages. Education and healthcare must be elevated from token budget lines to central pillars of economic strategy, scaled to the needs of a growing, youthful population. Security strategies must integrate development: farmers need reliable roads and markets, youths need jobs and skills, and local governments must be empowered to deliver daily services.
Equally important is regional cooperation. A functional North West Governors’ Forum could coordinate agricultural value chains, pool resources for energy and transport projects, and present a united front in negotiating federal and private investment.
The North West still holds numbers, but numbers alone are not destiny. Without transformation, political dominance will remain a hollow boast, a relic of past power with no bearing on the future.
(Leadership News)
