Kaduna State Governor, Senator Uba Sani, says the North has sufficient human resources to address its development challenges if its elites unite and take decisive action.
The governor stated this on Sunday when the leadership of the Arewa Consultative Forum, led by its Board of Trustees Chairman, Alhaji Bashir Dalhatu (Wazirin Dutse), paid him a courtesy visit.
The ACF is a prominent pan-Northern socio‑cultural organisation that advocates for the political and economic interests of the North.
Over the years, it has promoted inter‑regional dialogue, investment in education and infrastructure, and collaboration across states.
Its renewed leadership plans, including a proposed Central Endowment Fund, reflect a shift from advocacy to tangible development interventions across the region.
He noted that the forum’s renewed leadership focus has created an opportunity for the region to move beyond complaints and take concrete steps toward development.
“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,” he said.
According to the governor, the North has successful professionals and businessmen in every field of human endeavour, whose expertise can be harnessed for the benefit of the region.
“We have many successful northern professionals across different fields — business, academia, entrepreneurship, medicine, and others. The missing link is bringing everyone together. The ACF can help bridge that gap by enabling us to benefit from their collective experience, achievements, and resources to uplift our people,” he added.
Sani commended ACF’s plans to establish a Central Endowment Fund, advising that it should emphasise skills acquisition in order to “make our people self-reliant.”
The governor lamented that many northerners remain financially excluded because they do not have bank accounts and therefore cannot benefit from government social intervention programmes.
He recalled that one of his first decisions upon assuming office was to sign the first Executive Order on Financial Inclusion, and within one year, over 2.1 million poor people were onboarded into the financial system.
Sani also advised northern businessmen to invest in the financial sector, which would greatly assist small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the North, revealing that more than 60% of local government areas in the region lack a single bank branch.
“Today, there are over 4,000 branches of national banks in Nigeria, but only Kaduna and Kano states have about 100 branches. Meanwhile, some states in the South, with populations far smaller than Kano’s, have more bank branches than Kano, which has 44 local governments,” he said.
