BEVERLY HILLS, November 14, (THEWILL) – The Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II has renewed calls to tackle endemic poverty and rapid population growth to help end deadly Boko Haram violence saying the militants would always find willing recruits unless the root causes of radicalisation were addressed.
Sanusi, a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), said climate change, particularly the shrinking of Lake Chad, has had a devastating effect on local livelihoods.
Northeast Nigeria is largely dependent on fishing and agriculture but nine years of fighting has blighted both industries. The semi-desert region was impoverished even before the start of the violence and ranked consistently low on human development indices compared to the more prosperous south.
“We cannot divorce insecurity from the discourse on development and discourse on poverty,” he told academics and clerics at a conference on Boko Haram in Kano city.
“We cannot divorce horizontal inequalities from some of the tendencies of violence,” he said.
“Therefore regenerating the lives and bringing peace to the northeast has to be accompanied by regenerating that economy and recharging the Chad basin.”
The Emir said such demographic change would create huge social upheaval that would potentially make the effects of the Boko Haram conflict “child’s play” in the north as the country is expected to be the third most populous country after China and India by 2050.
He declared that Nigeria needed to build a strong economy and slow population growth to avoid poverty worsening.
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