Nigeria Vice- President Prof. Yemi Osinbajo yesterday lamented the high poverty rate in the North, saying that the human development indices in the northern states are by far poorer than the rest of the country.

A statement issued by Senior Special Adviser to the Vice-President on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, said Osinbajo spoke at the opening of Northern Reawakening Forum (NRF) Summit in Abuja.

The Vice-President said: “The northern states occupy about 70 per cent of the land mass of the country; they also have the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the country, the lowest rate of child enrolment in schools, highest number of unemployed young people, highest levels of poverty and faces the challenge of inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflict, including the Boko Haram terrorism.”

Osinbajo stated that the Northern Nigerian Economic Summit of 2012 was the first forum to draw attention to some of the depressing statistics about the condition of the North, saying that based on the conclusions of the summit, the North had some of the largest numbers of the out-of-school figures in the world.

Osinbajo observed that the situation was the same across the country, stressing that the challenges are only different in degrees

He expressed concern that Nigeria was “desperately poor” in spite of a population of 170 million and considered as the sixth largest producer of oil with over a hundred varieties of solid minerals and precious metals, hundreds of thousands of hectares of arable land and the largest economy in Africa.

The Vice-President was, however, optimistic that as dismal as some of the conditions might be, it does not have to define the future of the nation and that of the children still growing up in the country.

Osinbajo called on Nigerian leaders to aspire to win the heart of the people rather than enrich themselves with state resources.