Babachir Lawal, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), says President Bola Tinubu’s administration is not just ignoring northern Nigeria in infrastructure development, but actively dismantling the region’s gains.
Speaking on Trust TV’s Sunday Politics, Lawal said the north has been effectively cut off from ongoing federal projects, echoing similar claims by former Kano governor Rabiu Kwankwaso.
“There is no infrastructure work going on at any level in the north,” Lawal said. “No projects whatsoever. Maybe in their imagination, or in the spirit—but we don’t see it.”
Kwankwaso had last week accused the Tinubu administration of marginalising the north in national infrastructure investment. Lawal backed that claim, noting that both he and Kwankwaso—like Minister of Works David Umahi—are engineers who “see physical things differently.”
“Kwankwaso knows what he’s talking about,” Lawal said. “Every sensible, honest Nigerian will know that the north is being marginalised.”
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He went further, accusing the Tinubu administration of running an anti-North agenda.
“Everything this government does is designed to destroy the north,” he said. “The sense we get as Northerners is that if this government can destroy what it inherited, they will do it willingly.”
Lawal, a former stalwart of the All Progressives Congress (APC), questioned the party’s prospects in the north ahead of the next elections.
“Which elected official, a northerner, will go into the campaign on the platform of the APC in this coming election? Nobody,” he said. “Unless they join ADC, they will not win—simply because they belong to the destructive party.”
His comments come amid growing regional tensions over the Tinubu administration’s project distribution.
At a constitutional stakeholders’ forum in Kano last week, Kwankwaso had warned that worsening poverty and insecurity in the north were being worsened by skewed resource allocation.
Responding, Works Minister Umahi rejected the claims as “misleading,” saying 52 percent of the total length of Tinubu’s top four road projects lies in the north. He specifically cited the 756 km stretch of the Sokoto–Badagry superhighway running through the region.
Presidential adviser Sunday Dare also dismissed the marginalisation narrative, listing over 40 federal programmes currently ongoing or sustained in northern Nigeria. He called the criticisms “politically motivated.”
