Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani insists the North has the human resources to address its development challenges if the elites work together with a unity of purpose. He said this when he received the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) Board of Trustees (BoT) Chairman Bashir Dalhatu yesterday. Sani said the region must stop “complaining” but move to tackle poverty, as well as its education gaps and healthcare deficits.

He said: “For years, we have repeatedly spoken about our challenges, poverty, education gaps, healthcare deficits, and other development issues. “I believe we have reached a point where we must stop complaining and start acting on the challenges.

“We have many successful northern professionals across different fields, business, academia, entrepreneurship, medicine, and others. The missing link is bringing everyone together.”

The governor added: “The ACF can help bridge that gap by enabling us to benefit from their collective experience, achievements and resources to benefit our people.” Sani hailed the ACF’s plans to establish a Central Endowment Fund, advising that it should emphasise skills acquisition to “make our people self-reliant”. The governor lamented that there are many northerners who are financially excluded because they don’t have bank accounts and so cannot benefit from the government’s social intervention programmes.

He said one of the decisions he made when he assumed office was to sign the First Executive Order on Financial Inclusion, and within one year, over 2.1 million poor people were onboarded onto the financial system. He also advised northern businessmen to invest in the financial sector, which will greatly assist small and medium enterprises in the region.

The governor said: “Today, as we are speaking, there are over 4,000 branches of national banks in Nigeria. But only Kaduna and Kano states have about 100 branches. “But if you go to some states in the south that are not even up to 20 per cent of the population of Kano State, they have more bank branches than Kano State, which has 44 local governments.”

According to him, ACF remains one of the key platforms that is capable of addressing the challenges confronting the North because it is a neutral body without political bias. The governor saluted the ACF for reaching out to the Afenifere and Ohaneze Ndigbo to build bridges of trust and understanding.