President Umar Yar’Adua on Monday lamented the rate northerners depend on oil and other revenues from the federation account.

The president, who spoke through the Minister of Commerce and Industry, Mr Charlse Ugwu, at the opening of the first Northern Economic and Investment Summit (NEIS), in Abuja, noted that the region continues to depend on the federation account for its revenue when there are tremendous economic potentials in the region.

For him, he could not understand why there is high level of poverty in the North despite the successes achieved in terms of political stability.

“In fact, in most of the northern states the poverty level is very high. In some of these states, there is equally high unemployment rate, near total collapse of infrastructure, virtual absence of new investments, while practically all the states depend essentially on revenues accruing from federation account. At the same time, northern Nigeria has tremendous economic potentials, which have remained largely untapped. It is common knowledge that several minerals including Tin, Phosphate, Iron Ore, Columbite, Limestone, Gypsum and Granite abound in commercial quantities in most of these states.

Similarly, several agricultural commodities including Gum Arabic, Cotton, Groundnut, Sesame Seed, Millet, Sorghum and Rice are found in abundance. The missing link therefore, has remained our inability to add value to these resources by way of promoting industrialisation,” he said.

The way forward, the president said, is for the North to log on to the present administration’s development agenda which emphasis is on rebuilding both physical and human infrastructure including roads and railways, power and human capital development which must be accompanied with probity and transparency in the utilization of resources.

Another fight the North must fight is the fight against poverty which he said, all the state governments must embark on measures to alleviate poverty.
“We have to adopt massive industrialisation efforts using the Cluster Concept, which seeks to set up Free Trade Zones, Industrial Parks (we can have up to three in northern Nigeria), Industrial Clusters, Enterprise Zones and Incubators around Nigeria. It is also along this line that government has dedicated N10 billion for the development of Rice processing Clusters across the country.

But the Minister of Finance, Dr. Shamsuddeen Usman, urged all retired generals and public servants from the North to get involved in the development of the region, regretting that ,orthern Nigeria is the only place you have the highest number of children roaming about during school hours.
The summit brought together dignitaries from the North including the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III.