Governor Mu'azu Babangida Aliyu of Niger State yesterday heaped the blame for corruption and north's economic backwardness on Northern traditional rulers, accusing them of entrenching abject poverty in the region.

Addressing a one-day symposium on Poverty Eradication in Northern States, organised by the Niger State Community of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna State, Gov Aliyu, who put the average poverty rate in the region at 71 percent, noted that traditional rulers in the country, particularly in Northern region, are corrupt, support corruption and have lost the respect and moral authority to correct their subjects.

The governor insisted that the respect and reverence "hitherto enjoyed by the traditional institution in the region have been lost as the elders who are supposed to be custodians of wisdom and moral values have jettisoned their responsibilities respecting only materialism. s respecting only materialism."Indeed, we can extrapolate this to include the traditional institutions that many of us have grown to respect and which have unfortunately turned into acquisition of wealth, respecting and honouring thieves and armed robbers, conferring titles on those who should be discredited, thus casting a shadow on the integrity and moral authority of the traditional institutions," he said.

The chairman of Northern Governor's Forum lamented that "It is sad to note that our royal fathers who used to be highly respected and above board, who could summon their subjects to explain their sources of wealth no longer have the moral authority to do so.

"In fact, a traditional ruler is not supposed to be afraid of his subjects and it is part of his responsibility to ensure that any of his subjects whose source of sudden wealth is questionable is sanctioned and declared pariah so that everybody begins to respect hard work, dignity of labour and respect for constituted authority."

Aliyu, who stated that the abject poverty suffered in the region was due to poor leadership, argued that with good and purposeful leadership and accountability, the North would be free from the shackles of poverty.

He pointed out that, "Another dimension of leadership in Northern Nigeria today that appears to perpetuate poverty in our midst is the moral decadence in our society.

"The theme of this symposium is quite apt and timely if we take into account the report of recent studies into the Northern poverty phenomenon which shows that up to 95 percent of all the people in a particular state are classified as poor and that the 19 Northern states have an average poverty rate of 71 percent. Thus we must pay serious attention to poverty eradication in the north. But there is no way we can move forward or change the situation without changing our established norms, without challenging some privileged people who are accustomed to the privileges of their offices, without questioning old wisdoms to come out with new answers," he added.

Aliyu insisted that all hands must be on deck to win the war against corruption, else the war against poverty will remain futile "and we would have failed ourselves, our generation and even posterity. We must all own up and accept the fact that at the base of the deepening poverty in our states and the country at large is the endemic corruption in our country and we must join hands with the president to fight corruption to a standstill."

The Niger State Chief Servant who declared that almajiri as an embarrassment opined that, "We can only realise our developmental aspiration if we resolve today to say no to poverty in our states by providing responsible, accountable, transparent and God fearing leadership. We have to change the people's orientation and value system so that we can all appreciate that leadership is not an opportunity for plundering our resources, but a privilege to render service to our fellow human beings in the most accountable and dignified manner."

He said, "We need to discourage the ranka ya dade syndrome which abuses and dehumanises the people by offering them stipends out of the often stolen wealth, and encourage laziness while some of us go about in arrogance. We also need to address the embarrassing almajiri phenomenon in our states; we need to question what appears as the Islamisation of poverty. We need to ask, why do we have endemic poverty in Muslims dominated settlements, when Allah has enjoined the faithful to balance the search for the thereafter with the search for this world?

He stated that "we need to constantly tell ourselves the truth about our situation, because we cannot measure up to others in terms of development index unless we take our destinies in our hand and stop deceiving ourselves, creating the impression that some of our unfortunate cultural practices and habits like begging, indolence and get rich quick tendencies are synonymous with Islamic injunctions.

"Those of us who understand Islam know that it is a radical religion, an equitable religion that encourages everybody to be self sufficient and to be his brother's keeper. Indeed, a major part of our responsibility in our leadership roles today is to intensify campaign for people to seek knowledge and to be well educated about their religion, its dos and don'ts so that they can appreciate the essence of their worship and their being as humans,"

"It is very important to appreciate good governance which is manifested in real exercise of leadership and not rulership, because this is the only way people can understand our actions. Some of us are too educated to be manipulated; too exposed to know that we have not been doing much as a society and as a nation to move forward; experienced in administration to know that we cannot move with the old wisdoms and dogmas."