By Arc. Paul Gimbason
Kwaturu District,
Kachia LGA.
Kaduna.
Southern Kaduna stands out as one of Nigeria’s most vibrant regions, blessed with human talent, fertile land, and a proud history of education and civic consciousness. Yet, despite these advantages, the region continues to trail behind in the political and developmental affairs of Kaduna State and Nigeria at large.
The question many have asked for years is simple: Why does Southern Kaduna keep falling short politically? The answer is not singular. It is a combination of historical marginalization, internal divisions, poor strategic planning, and short-term political behavior that collectively weaken the region’s leverage in state and federal politics.
This article seeks to unpack these layers, not to assign blame, but to offer an honest diagnosis and a roadmap for renewal. Southern Kaduna’s challenges are not permanent; they are the result of human choices and institutional weaknesses that can be corrected through unity, vision, and discipline.
- Historical Roots of Exclusion
Southern Kaduna’s political marginalization is rooted in history. From the colonial period through the post-independence era, political and administrative arrangements in Northern Nigeria were structured to favor dominant emirate systems, which often sidelined minority groups. These colonial boundaries and power systems later evolved into political exclusion in the new Kaduna State. Southern Kaduna, despite being one of the most educationally advanced minority regions in the North, found itself treated as an appendage rather than an equal stakeholder in governance.
Even after Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999, these inherited structures persisted. The concentration of political power and resources in the northern and central parts of the state left Southern Kaduna struggling for inclusion. While the region has produced outstanding intellectuals, professionals, and public servants, it has rarely controlled the levers of executive power.
Over time, this structural imbalance created a mindset of alienation — a belief that the system is rigged against Southern Kaduna. This perception, although grounded in historical truth, has sometimes paralyzed political initiative. Instead of building strategic alliances to negotiate for power, many political actors in the region have retreated into grievance politics, focusing on lamentation rather than pragmatic organization.
The legacy of exclusion also explains the region’s mistrust of mainstream political parties. The feeling of being “perpetual outsiders” has fostered loyalty to familiar opposition identities like the PDP, even when power shifted decisively elsewhere. This emotional loyalty, while understandable, has often cost Southern Kaduna the opportunity to influence key decisions at the state and federal levels.
History, however, should be a guide not a prison. Recognizing the structural roots of marginalization should inspire collective strategy, not passive resignation. The next generation of Southern Kaduna leaders must learn to use historical understanding as a weapon of wisdom, not an excuse for political paralysis.
2027 is around the corner, time is ticking and the political campaign drums are about to be banged.
- Division and the Loss of Collective Strength
Southern Kaduna is a tapestry of over thirty ethnic nationalities, each with its language, culture, and sense of identity. Diversity should be a source of richness, but in politics, it has become a burden. Instead of forging a united Southern Kaduna voice, this diversity has been exploited by political actors who divide communities along ethnic or religious lines for personal advantage.
Each election cycle reveals the same pattern: multiple Southern Kaduna candidates vying for the same position, splitting votes, and handing victory to better-organized blocs in other parts of the state. The absence of a central coordination mechanism means that even when the region commands numerical strength, it fails to translate that into tangible political wins.
The religious divide adds another layer of fragmentation. While Southern Kaduna is predominantly Christian, its internal denominational rivalries have sometimes spilled into politics, weakening solidarity and fueling suspicion among subgroups. Politics has become less about collective interest and more about which community, denomination, or clan gets what share of recognition.
This disunity has made coalition-building nearly impossible. Successful politics in Nigeria relies on strategic alliances yet Southern Kaduna often negotiates too late, with too many internal quarrels unresolved. The region’s leaders must recognize that unity does not mean uniformity; it means coordinated purpose.
For Southern Kaduna to rise politically, it must rediscover the power of collective bargaining. Ethnic associations, youth groups, and religious bodies should rally behind a shared Southern Kaduna agenda, one that transcends personal or tribal ambition.
- The PDP–APC Divide: Loyalty Without Leverage
Since 1999, the PDP was the natural political home for most Southern Kaduna politicians. It offered refuge when other platforms were perceived as hostile. But when the All Progressives Congress (APC) took over as the ruling party both at the state and federal levels in 2015, Southern Kaduna’s political leadership failed to adapt to the changing reality.
Remaining outside the ruling structure for ten years has been costly. The region’s politicians have watched as appointments, federal projects, and strategic investments flowed to areas better aligned with the power center. Loyalty to the PDP, though commendable in principle, became political isolation in practice.
Some leaders have belatedly begun to cross over to the APC, but most of these defections are uncoordinated and self-serving. There is no collective strategy guiding the move, no negotiation platform to ensure Southern Kaduna gains real benefits from its participation in the ruling party. As a result, many of these defectors end up as political spectators in their new home.
If the PDP loves Southern Kaduna that much why doesn’t it zone the Governorship seat to the zone? The PDP has successfully built emotional loyalty in Southern Kaduna but has failed to translate that sentiment into structural inclusion. The region provides votes but rarely dictates the ticket. This happens because party decision-making power (state executive committees, financial sponsors, and godfathers) remains dominated by the northern zone. The PDP leverages Southern Kaduna’s consistent loyalty but does not feel compelled to reward it politically.
Politics is about timing and structure. While emotional loyalty to an old party may feel honorable, strategic engagement with the ruling power is what brings results. Southern Kaduna must learn to separate sentiment from strategy, loyalty from leverage.
The goal is not blind allegiance to any party but strategic presence in whichever political structure holds power. Without that pragmatism, the region risks another decade of marginalization: loyal, vocal, but powerless.
- The Kachia University Example: Progress Undermined by Rivalry
The recent establishment of the Federal University of Applied Sciences in Kachia Local Government Area was a landmark victory for Southern Kaduna. The project, achieved through legislative approval by the National Assembly, should have been a unifying moment, a symbol of progress for the region. Instead, it exposed the deep divisions that continue to plague Southern Kaduna politics.
Rather than celebrating the institution as a collective achievement, local politicians descended into rivalry, each claiming credit for lobbying its establishment. Public statements and media posts quickly shifted from celebration to competition. In the process, attention was diverted from the far more important questions of implementation, sustainability, and community readiness.
Kachia itself remains one of the least developed parts of the region, yet it’s one of the oldest and most popular Local governments in the state thus lacking basic infrastructure to host a federal institution. The Gumel area, where part of the university’s operations will unfold, already faces a severe shortage of housing. As the university attracts new students and staff, the absence of adequate accommodation could become a major crisis.
This is where Southern Kaduna leaders need foresight. Instead of fighting over credit, they should mobilize private investors and local entrepreneurs to develop hostels, lodges, restaurants, and small businesses around the university. Creating a Private Hostel Development Scheme could open up Kachia’s economy, generate jobs, and attract further government attention and by extension the entire Southern Kaduna.
The Kachia University episode is a mirror of Southern Kaduna’s broader problem: too much competition for recognition, too little cooperation for progress. If leaders do not learn to unite around opportunities like this, even major victories will become missed chances.
- Political Fragmentation and the Culture of Short-Termism
Southern Kaduna politics suffers from short attention spans. Every election cycle brings a fresh round of defections, betrayals, and personal battles that erase any sense of long-term planning. Too often, leaders enter politics not as institution-builders but as opportunity-seekers, chasing contracts, appointments, or visibility.
This obsession with immediate rewards has destroyed continuity. No consistent policy agenda exists for Southern Kaduna, no long-term vision document, no sustained dialogue with parties or government. Each leader starts afresh, and each term ends in fragmentation.
In contrast, other regions within Kaduna State have learned to institutionalize their political strategy. They invest in think tanks, mentoring structures, and informal alliances that ensure their people remain relevant regardless of who holds power. Southern Kaduna, by contrast, starts over every four years.
The result is predictable: political fatigue, wasted votes, and declining morale. Until Southern Kaduna builds institutions that outlive individuals, progress will remain episodic and reversible.
Political maturity demands that leaders think beyond the next election. They must focus on legacy-building, establishing frameworks for negotiation, representation, and development that future generations can inherit.
- Security, Insecurity, and Political Paralysis
Insecurity remains the single most devastating threat to Southern Kaduna’s progress. Recurring attacks, communal clashes, and waves of displacement have not only claimed countless lives but have also crippled the region’s social and political vitality. Communities once celebrated for their active participation in governance and development now find themselves preoccupied with the basic struggle for survival.
Elections in many rural parts of Southern Kaduna now witness alarmingly low voter turnout not because of apathy, but because citizens fear violence or feel abandoned by those meant to protect them. Political mobilization becomes almost impossible when roads are unsafe, villages are deserted, and local markets lie in ruins.
Many residents believe that the insecurity is a tactical and deliberate attempt to destabilize the region and weaken its collective political voice. However, history shows that such designs can be resisted and defeated through unity, vigilance, and strategic organization.
Despite these daunting realities, it is only fair to commend the remarkable efforts of Southern Kaduna leaders both political and traditional, who continue to engage tirelessly with security agencies, foster community dialogue, and advocate for peace amidst limited resources and immense pressure. Their actions, though often underreported, reflect a deep sense of duty to the survival and dignity of their people.
Through peace summits, mediation forums, and consistent calls for justice, fairness, and balanced security deployment, these leaders have ensured that Southern Kaduna’s plight remains firmly on the national agenda. Beyond formal interventions, countless local stakeholders, clergy, youth groups, and traditional rulers have sustained quiet, grassroots initiatives to calm tensions and rebuild trust among divided communities.
While insecurity still poses a serious obstacle to political stability and development, these ongoing efforts remind us that Southern Kaduna is not a helpless victim. It is a region actively confronting its challenges with courage, dialogue, and an unbroken faith in the power of peace.
- Weak Political Structures and Grassroots Disconnect
The most serious weakness in Southern Kaduna’s political life lies not in its voter numbers but in its lack of organized political structures. In many local government areas, party offices remain inactive between election seasons. Political engagement is often limited to rallies and campaign periods, after which the structures go dormant.
This absence of sustained grassroots mobilization has hollowed out the region’s political capacity. Decisions are typically made by a handful of elites at the top, leaving ward and community members disconnected from actual governance processes. Political parties in the region have thus become vehicles for individual ambition rather than collective representation.
The cost of this disconnection is enormous. Without a solid grassroots network, Southern Kaduna cannot effectively negotiate with state and federal structures. Party leaders who emerge without popular legitimacy are easily manipulated or ignored by central party organs. The region ends up with appointees who represent themselves and not the people, just as it was recently experienced during the local government election.
To reverse this, Southern Kaduna must rebuild party institutions from the ground up. Ward-level committees should be empowered to engage in year-round civic education, leadership training, and youth mobilization. Town unions, student associations, and local cooperatives can serve as civic partners in this renewal.
True political strength grows from the bottom, not the top. Until Southern Kaduna reconnects its politics to its grassroots where the real people live, vote, and hope its influence in state politics will remain fragile.
- Socio-Economic and Educational Disadvantages
No region can rise politically without economic and intellectual empowerment. Despite its human potential, Southern Kaduna still lags behind in access to quality education, healthcare, and infrastructure. This imbalance is not just a development issue; it directly translates into political weakness.
Politicians from the region often find themselves negotiating for appointments rather than influencing policy because they lack the economic base or technical expertise to assert power. Meanwhile, youth unemployment and rural poverty have created a sense of frustration that manifests as political apathy.
The underdevelopment of education in particular is alarming. Once home to some of the North’s finest missionary schools and teacher training colleges, Southern Kaduna’s educational infrastructure has suffered decades of neglect. The absence of technical and entrepreneurial institutions means that even when federal projects arrive, the local workforce is often unprepared to benefit.
This is why initiatives like the Federal University of Applied Sciences in Kachia hold such symbolic and practical importance. The institution can serve as a foundation for technological and industrial transformation, but only if the region aligns its priorities with the needs of the future. The establishment of private hostels, ICT hubs, and small-scale enterprises around the university could turn Kachia and by extension the entire Southern Kaduna into a model of educationally driven local development.
Education must therefore become the centerpiece of Southern Kaduna’s political strategy. The region should create scholarship foundations, establish vocational centers, and attract private investment into learning infrastructure. A politically enlightened and economically self-reliant population cannot be ignored, it commands respect.
- The Consequences of Disunity
The results of political division are visible and painful. Year after year, Southern Kaduna finds itself underrepresented in key political and administrative positions. Developmental projects that should naturally flow to the region are diverted elsewhere, and when funds do arrive, they are often poorly managed or left uncompleted.
The root of this problem deepened around 2015, when a wave of deception and political manipulation swept through the region. At the time, some local power brokers desperate to preserve their influence deliberately tagged the All Progressives Congress (APC) as a Muslim political party. This narrative was cleverly designed to instill fear among Christians in Southern Kaduna and discourage them from exploring alternative political alignments.
Rather than allowing free political choice and strategic alignment, these politicians fed on the ignorance and emotions of the people spreading divisive propaganda that presented the APC as a religious threat rather than a political platform. This manipulation effectively kept Southern Kaduna isolated from mainstream power at both the State and Federal levels, ensuring that those who benefitted from old loyalties continued to dominate while the region remained politically stagnant.
Because the region rarely speaks with one voice, it struggles to set or enforce a coherent development agenda. This lack of coordination also weakens its ability to respond to injustice when attacks or marginalization occur, reactions are often fragmented rather than unified. The absence of collective political direction has left the region vulnerable to exploitation by those who profit from its disunity.
Over the years, the Southern Kaduna People’s Union (SOKAPU) has served as the moral and cultural voice of the region consistently advocating for justice, equity, and security. The union has played a critical role in mobilizing awareness, documenting grievances, and presenting the collective position of the people to government authorities. However, for SOKAPU’s impact to translate into measurable political power, its advocacy must be strategically aligned with developmental and governance goals rather than limited to reactionary responses.
SOKAPU remains a valuable bridge between the grassroots and the elite. Its credibility and structure can be leveraged to coordinate political education, civic enlightenment, and unity among diverse ethnic groups within the region. When fully empowered and non-partisan, SOKAPU can help transform emotional responses into organized influence becoming a rallying point for consensus-building, negotiation, and civic discipline.
The absence of such unified strategy has also eroded public confidence in politics. Many young people in Southern Kaduna have grown disillusioned, believing that politics is a game for the powerful few. This growing cynicism, if left unchecked, will produce an entire generation of passive citizens who withdraw from civic engagement altogether, leaving governance in the hands of opportunists.
Economically, disunity has discouraged investors. No serious investor commits capital in a politically volatile or fragmented environment. Rivalries among Southern Kaduna leaders, sometimes extending into business, religious, and social projects, have denied the region the opportunity to harness its vast internal market potential.
Southern Kaduna must therefore understand that unity is not an option, it is a survival strategy. Without it, the region risks permanent political irrelevance in Kaduna State’s evolving political order. The future will not favor those who cling to old divisions but those who learn, adapt, and unite around common purpose and shared progress.
- The Way Forward: From Emotion to Strategy
Southern Kaduna’s rebirth must begin with a conscious shift from emotion to strategy, from lamentation to organization. The path to recovery requires a blend of political reform, economic planning, and civic enlightenment anchored on collective interest. There are so many opportunities especially from the Central government opened to the region recently and except it focuses on its growth and development, it may never have this kind of opportunity again. I hope it utilizes this great opportunity.
First, the region needs a Southern Kaduna Political and Development Forum; a standing, nonpartisan platform bringing together traditional rulers, religious leaders, women, youth, professionals, and political representatives. This forum would serve as the think tank and negotiation arm of the region, ensuring that Southern Kaduna speaks with one voice in dealings with political parties and government agencies.
Second, there must be a deliberate investment in political education and civic literacy. Organizing symposiums, policy conferences, town hall meetings, and leadership seminars will help citizens understand how governance works and how to influence it effectively. Civic enlightenment will also nurture a new generation of disciplined, informed voters who demand accountability from leaders.
Third, Southern Kaduna must pair its political awakening with economic vision. The Kachia University experience is a test case: leaders should encourage private hostel developments, small businesses, and local entrepreneurship to attract capital and create jobs. Prosperity fuels political confidence.
Finally, Southern Kaduna’s leaders must practice what they preach. The people need role models who embody unity, humility, and foresight not politicians who switch parties for personal gain. The coming years must be about building institutions, not individuals; strategy, not sentiment.
- Conclusion: One Voice, One Vision
Southern Kaduna’s story is one of resilience amid adversity. Yet, resilience alone is not enough, it must now evolve into political wisdom and strategic unity. The region cannot afford another decade of self-inflicted marginalization, rivalry, and reactive politics.
The establishment of the Federal University of Applied Sciences in Kachia offers a clear lesson and opportunity. If leaders rally together to develop supporting infrastructure; roads, hostels,hospitals, markets, schools and training centers, the institution could transform the local economy and restore faith in collective action. But if the region falls back into its familiar cycle of credit-seeking and disunity, even this golden opportunity will fade.
Politics is not charity; it is negotiation backed by strength. Southern Kaduna must build that strength through education, solidarity, and structured engagement. The days of emotional politics are over. The era of strategic politics must begin. Need not to forget that politicians decamping must not necessarily all decamp to one party, there is unity in diversity as to know that politics is a game of numbers but wisdom also plays a vital role in political calculations. Southern Kaduna voice needs to be heard in the Major political parties, at least the best three.
To get there, Southern Kaduna needs unity of purpose, coordinated leadership, and consistent investment in people. This is the only way to ensure inclusion in governance, fair share in development, and a dignified place in the political equation of Kaduna State and Nigeria.
The time for lamentation has passed. The time for organization, vision, and leadership has come. If Southern Kaduna can finally learn to stand together, it will no longer be remembered as the region left behind but as the region that rose again through unity and wisdom.
Long live the Southern Kaduna
Long live Kaduna State
Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.