Jibrin Ibrahim, Senior Fellow, Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja
Presentation to Arewa Consultative Forum 25 Anniversary Celebrations, Kaduna, 22nd November, 2025
I am glad that ACF has asked me to give a ten-minutes presentation on Arewa in the next 25 years. This is an indication that there is a new interest in trend analysis or futures studies within the leadership of this organisation. This is an interdisciplinary field that systematically explores and analyses possible, deplorable, probable, and/or preferable futures to inform decision-making today.
It differs from prediction which is a disciple for people with spiritual insights. Trend analysis is a social science which uses a combination of scientific forecasting and foresight to help societies and organizations manage uncertainty, prepare for change, and work towards a more desired future. Key methods include scenario planning, and it often examines trends across social, technological, economic, environmental, and political (STEEP) categories.
A trend analysis of where Arewa is headed in the next 25 years will reveal a clear pathway to ANNIHILATION. There is no soft way of describing the current outcome we are chasing. Every day, we are warmed that to survive as a people, we must change our ways and move away from the massive level of public corruption and self-aggrandisement that makes it virtually impossible for governments to do their work of producing public goods for the people – security, welfare, good health, infrastructure and so on.
The simple message from trend analysis is that we must change We must improve governance or perish. The problem is those in government are not interested in listening. The governing class we apparently elected do not have the empathy to listen to what the people need desperately? As for the people themselves, so far, they have demonstrated an inability to impose their will on their leaders, in spite of occasional explosions of discontentment and anger.
Trend analysis looks at likely outcomes based on current data. My trend analysis for the next decade is as follows – I am not sufficiently bold to talk of 25 years’
1) The Arewa Consultative Forum would be unable to organise another big event similar to this 2025 bash because their leaders would to too scared of abductions and random killings to travel from their base to Kaduna. In desperation, ACF may change their standing rules to meet in Abuja, and if that is not possible, in Dubai where many of them will be based.
2) The struggles for the emancipation of Biafra, Niger Delta and Oduduwa Republics from the exploding Federal Republic of Nigeria would have reached an advanced stage and the “international community” would gleefully line up supporting one side or the other thankful that their dream of 1967 is coming to pass.
3) Arewa would discover with shock and dismay that there is no Republic emerging in the North as its constituent zones of the Caliphate, Borno, Middle Belt and the majority, i.e. the others, comes to the conclusion that they have no interest in a marriage of convenience BUT have no capacity or will for independent existence.
4) The winners, to our collective shock, will be the six million private citizens who have procured small arms and light weapons and are using them to rob their neighbours, kill the men, sexually assault the women, stop farming and promote starvation turning this beautiful country into hell.
This is what projections from trend analysis are telling us as things stand today. In other words, it is the worst-case scenario. The purpose of futures study or trend analysis however is to ensure that the worst case does not happen. That preventive measures are taken to ensure that much better outcomes emerge. I believe that the essence of this 25th anniversary celebrations is to engage in deep reflections to change the trajectory we are on to a better one. This would require telling ourselves the truth. Let us take inspiration from the Sardauna of Sokoto and his Government.
In 1965, the Northern Nigeria Regional House of Assembly passed the Grazing Reserve Law to give legal backing to grazing reserves and stock routes that were customarily recognised. Grazing reserves are areas of land demarcated, set aside and reserved for exclusive or semi-exclusive use by pastoralists.
The purpose of enacting the law was to respond to a problem identified in a research report by the World Bank that the rapid increase in population growth and expansion of agriculture in Northern Nigeria was creating a trend of conflict generating mechanisms between farmers and herders that could precipitate a major national crisis within the next 25 years, i.e. by 1990. A total of 417 grazing reserves all over Northern Nigeria to separate the farmers from the herders.
The short-term goal was to prevent conflicts between farmers and herders that could affect social cohesion in the region. The plan had a long-term goal which was to change nomadic pastoralists to settled and semi-settled agro-pastoralists and ultimately mixed farmers. Mixed farming is a system of farming in which crop growing is combined with keeping livestock for profit.
The grazing reserves were to be provided with watering points, veterinary outposts to improve new breeds and animal health, pasture development and marketing channels. Implementation was halted by the coup.
The process was lost in restructuring as the civil war and state creation led to the loss of governance knowledge and programming on a pan northern basis and the anticipated growth of conflicts arrived with no anchor to address it at both the federal and state levels.
My only message to this meeting is that trend analysis, futures study should be a major focus if we need to save both Arewa and Nigeria. ACF needs to go beyond my ten minutes and prepare a proper study to guide its work.
I was part of the OECD and the World Bank team that in 1993-94 conducted the West African Long-Term Perspective Study – 1995 to 2020. We spent a year conducting a detailed study, reading the tea leaves of where Nigeria was headed in the next 25 years. Sadly, all our projections of the dangers ahead that should be avoided have come to pass.
We drew attention to rapid population growth rate, producing a youth bulge due to a significant decline in infant mortality, and posed the question whether we would benefit from the demographic dividend if we educate and train the youth and diversify the economy to provide jobs or we do nothing and suffer the blows from a demographic bombshell. We did nothing and the bombs have gone off.
We observed the rapidity of rural-urban migration and pointed out that the cities were developing vast slums, as young people left their villages to cities with neither training nor education, thereby transferring rural poverty to concentrated urban squalor.
A society with a vast lumpen hustler population surviving day-by-day in a difficult informal economy, creates a vast “precariat” that would promote instability. That is what we now have. We warned the governments that the universal compulsory primary school scheme introduced in 1976 had been abandoned by most Northern state governments and there will be consequences.
We drew attention to the urgent need to implement it, as our future depended on it. No one in government cared. Today, Nigeria has the largest population of school-age children in the world, who are out of school and no government has seen it as a national emergency over the past three decades.
We drew attention to the rise of religiosity and the penetration of the religious arena by informal religious actors, following the outbreak of the Maitatsine violence in the early 1980s, which we said could balloon into significant levels of violent extremism. We drew attention to the socio-economic crisis in the Sahel as a possible trigger and many in power thought it was mere speculation, until Boko Haram became part of our lived realty.
We also drew attention to the rapid expansion of both agriculture and pastoralism in the same space, leading to violent conflicts and a run on arable land in the Middle Belt, which is where we are today. These were our projections for the 2020s, handed over to governments in 1994. Nothing was done.
Two year ago, the Institute of Security Studies in South Africa did a trend analysis of Nigeria in 2050 and they covered essentially the same grounds. They drew attention to what the data is saying today – that everything is more dire now than it was previously.
Over four decades after the introduction of compulsory universal basic education, over 30% of the population is illiterate with the numbers for Arewa being much higher. The country is in chronic crisis, with an essentially bankrupt economy that has sank into a debt trap. Nigerians have never been so unsafe, with multiple insurgencies, widespread banditry, separatist agitations, policy discontinuities, massive corruption and a level of poor governance that presents an existential threat.
The study showed graphics demonstrating that Nigeria and Malaysia where at a similar level of economic performance at independence, but today the latter country has transformed its economy and moved far ahead, while we remain in crisis. Nigeria is not on track to achieve most of the SDGs by 2030, and is forecast to have the highest number of poor people globally by 2050.
Internally, there is a poverty polarity between Northern and Southern Nigeria, with the North lagging far behind. Nigeria has one of the world’s lowest tax revenue-to-GDP ratios, leaving little fiscal space for productive expenditure. The public health and education sectors are incapacitated by mismanagement, corruption and inadequate funding.
Nigeria can and must address the security challenges it faces by providing the leadership for the security forces to be properly equipped and encouraged to do its work. It is still possible to promote national cohesion and social inclusion by ensuring a fair distribution of socio-economic amenities across the states. The government needs to set up a national social protection programme to support the poorest and most vulnerable to reduce poverty and inequality.
Nigeria’s population is forecast to increase to over 450 million by 2050, by which time it will be the third most populous country in the world. Although Nigeria has great agricultural potential, the sector is unable to meet the nutritional demands of a rapidly growing population. Nigeria has made little progress in export diversification.
The country remains a rentier economy but, currently, even that is lost as a significant portion of the petroleum produced is stolen and sold by private, government and security cabals that have become pipeline bandits. Macroeconomic instability, a skills shortage, an unfriendly business environment and infrastructure deficits constrain productivity and growth in the non-oil sector.
The situation is bad. Nonetheless, with aggressive but reasonable policy interventions, Nigeria could have a significantly brighter future if we have a leadership with vision and competence. This is the major challenge posed to Nigerian citizens today.
Nigeria can and must address the security challenges it faces by providing the leadership for the security forces to be properly equipped and encouraged to do its work. It is still possible to promote national cohesion and social inclusion by ensuring a fair distribution of socio-economic amenities across the states.
The government needs to set up a national social protection programme to support the poorest and most vulnerable to reduce poverty and inequality. Also, there is the necessity of intensifying the struggle against corruption, improving public financial management and domestic revenue mobilisation by accelerating digitalisation to enhance tax efficiency, and addressing the infrastructure gap by creating an enabling environment for public-private-partnerships in infrastructure development.
To be continued tomorrow
