Smoke woke me up. It started as an offensive odour. Then as it grew in intensity, the last vestiges of sleep quickly deserted me. Alarmed, I sprang up trying to trace the source of the acrid smell. My worst fear was that an electric circuit had been somehow bridged during the night which had caused a spark at my place. So strong was the smell that it was easy to trace where the smoke was coming from. Outside, the morning light had turned dark as billows of dark fumes rolled upwards in waves. My relief was palpable. The fire was outside and my home was safe. More importantly, it was not an accidental fire. There were men in fluorescent jackets stoking the fire while making sure it did not get out of hand. They looked like government officials. But the relief quickly turned to pity as I saw people scampering out of burning sites while trying to salvage whatever they could of their meagre belongings. Particularly heartbreaking was the sight of two kids of about three or four. Each was struggling with a plastic bucket filled with some household goods. They were running nowhere really because they had nowhere to go. Eventually they settled for a nearby vulcanizer. The older ones were just as confused. There was a sense of disorientation as they moved about with whatever they could salvage. They, like the kids, had nowhere to go.

These were people who had settled along the length of the developing Coastal Road. Many initially had used makeshift sheds as their homes. But constant raids had made even that impracticable. Now they are nimble. They use big umbrellas that they can easily fold and run with. It is probably their most prized possession. It is where they huddle during the sweltering heat of the day and the chilly ocean breeze at night. They are also not strangers to fires as their wastes are burnt in small fires at night. These emit all kinds of hazardous fumes that might have long term effects on them and the neighborhood. It is safe to say they have formed a colony of the homeless and the jobless. The main job being to collect plastic bottles and plastic food packs. The other occupation is less savoury. They unscrew anything that is loose under the cover of night. Majority of them are from the north. To walk among them is to think you are in a suburb in the north because their lingua franca is largely Hausa. They are mainly youths. It is worrisome to think that they can easily morph into a mob or worse, a standing army.

Three days later, they started trickling back just as I knew they would. Just as the officials who dislodged them must have known they would. Dislodging them again is a matter of time because they simply cannot be allowed to settle along the Coastal Road. They are a blight to the aesthetics of the road, an eyesore to revelers, including foreigners, who use the beaches, a certain fear to those who live in the affluent neighborhood, an embarrassment to governments, Local and State, and finally, a constant reminder of the failure of leadership, especially northern leadership, to take care of its own.

It is still about two full years to the Presidential election in 2027 but this same northern leadership is already blowing the Presidential whistle as many of us knew it would. The train to political power is gathering momentum as it always does mid-term in the electoral cycle. The agitations usually start from the north especially if the incumbent at the center is from the south. The dramatis personae are almost always the same although they hide under different socio/political umbrellas. Their storyline is also very similar. They always argue that the north has been shortchanged in governance. They use religion as an emotive and manipulative tool. They use self-created poverty as evidence. They did it with Obasanjo but didn?t succeed. They did it with Jonathan and succeeded. They are out again with Tinubu. Whether they succeed with Tinubu is really not the point with me. It is the reason they always give that is insulting to the intellect. These are the leaders who cannot provide for their own and have watched helplessly as their people migrate southwards for survival. You wonder if the center is responsible for the poverty in the north. You wonder if those who shut down schools ? and their economy - for religious reasons did so at the dictate of the center. You wonder if those who marry eligible spinsters off and prefer fertility to education do so at the instructions of the center. You can?t help concluding that these leaders are intentional about weaponising poverty. Any right thinking person should know that poverty and population are combustible. That population without economic empowerment is a recipe for instability and banditry which are what the north has been facing. The situation in the north is not directly about the center. If it was, the situation in the south-east which has not been at the center of power for more than half a century will not be better than that of the entire north in almost all indices of economic development. It is rather directly about the sincerity and competence of northern leaders. Seems to me that they see political power as an end in itself and not a means to an end. So all those thinking of new political realignments should know we are up to their game. It is about self and not the north. And even less, the country.

Speaking of politicians, there must be a limit to what they make a political capital out of. A youth corps member was unguarded enough to describe her host State as smelly and her President as terrible. Yet, top politicians are defending her under the guise of free speech. I don?t know where she comes from and how fragrant her place is, but if all she could see were not the beauty and wonder in Lagos but its smelly state, then it speaks to the state of her mind and what she has been feeding that mind with. While I do not support punishing her, I certainly would not defend her negative and indecent utterances. She needs counselling to be more guarded and more importantly, to be more positive. A positive attitude is the route to progress and achievement in this uncertain world. It is unfortunately, what many of our youths today, aided by some political elders, are not cultivating. The service year is for many, a year of fun. A year of exploration. A year to meet new people and forge lasting friendships. A year to experience new things including the beauty in communities different from yours.

? Adetiba is a veteran journalist and a public affairs commentator

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