Former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has issued a stark warning regarding the catastrophic levels of insecurity and bloodshed in northern Nigeria, declaring the situation has placed the region under a “spiritual curse”.
Dogara made the comments on Tuesday, during a panel session at the Nigeria Investment and Industrialisation Summit (NNIIS) 2025, organised by the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) in Abuja.
He emphasised that the crisis must be immediately treated as a national emergency, to prevent the stalling of Nigeria’s overall development.
The former Speaker lamented that the level of violence – including relentless killings, banditry, and abductions – has transcended ordinary socio-political concerns. “With the kind of bloodletting we are witnessing in the North, if you are a person of faith, you will know that we are operating under a curse because it is human blood”, Dogara stated.
He warned that the extreme insecurity and poverty in the region pose an existential threat to the entire country: “The development of northern Nigeria is not a regional prerogative; it must be seen as a national emergency. If the vast number of people we have in the North are not developed, Nigeria is going nowhere”.
Dogara urged northern leaders and citizens to abandon any culture of dependence on external solutions and instead commit to radical, transformative self-reliance.
“We need to depart from doing business-as-usual and embrace radical, transformative action. Help is not coming from anywhere;we must take our destiny into our own hands”, he declared, calling on the North to seize control of its future to reverse the current downward spiral.
