In today’s edition of Making Nigeria Better we travel to Kaduna State to examine the economic potential of the territory and see what it can offer

[1] First of all, Kaduna metropolis is the gateway to northern Nigeria. It has road links to all the other states that make up the old Northern Region. This should have been expanded into rail links, with a thriving Northern Nigeria Railway Company

[2] Kaduna city should also be the centre of Islamic finance in Nigeria. Every Arab and Middle East bank should have a branch there, offering loans to farmers, industrialists, food processors, etc at 2% interest rates

[3] In the 1980, Kaduna was on the up, with the likes of Peugeot Automobile, Brahma Guarana, Capri Sun, etc, all opening huge factories in the city. All those industrial centres need to be revived

[4] Kaduna metropolis also used to be the epicentre of Nigeria’s cotton trade. Farmers used to take their cotton to Arewa Textiles, who were a major industrial player. Today, that massive plant is comatose

[5] Our highly acclaimed Kaduna petroleum refinery is also lying idle. I think the plant should have been handed over to the Kaduna State government to maintain and expend it. Who knows, what it may have been today with local management

[6] Cities like Kaduna, Birnin-Gwari, Zaria, Kafanchan, Kachia, Saminaka, etc, should all be home to food processing plants. Crops that are widely grown across Kaduna State include cassava, sugarcane, millet, sorghum, dates, groundnuts, etc. Kaduna State House of Assembly should pass a law, making it compulsory to process every primary product grown in the state

[7] Kaduna State is also home to Gurara Waterfalls. Why this is not one of Nigeria’s biggest tourist attractions like Niagara Falls is beyond me

[8] Gurara Waterfalls also has huge hydroelectric potential, as does River Kaduna. Why the state government has not built artificial rapids on both sites to generate say 10,000MW of power is beyond me

[9] Talking of River Kaduna, it is a tributary to the River Niger. Why has it not been dredged to create a major internal waterway linking southern and northern Nigeria

[10] Many Nigerians are probably not aware of Kajuru Castle, a luxury villa, built at Kajuru village in southern Kaduna State by a German expatriate who lived there in the 1980s. It is about 45 km from Kaduna on a mountaintop. Built with one meter thick granite stone in a fanciful medieval-inspired Romanesque style, the castle is adorned with turrets, an armory and a dungeon. What the Kaduna State government should be looking to do is turn this into Nigeria’s Taj Mahal!