Governing the Ground: The BMCC Case and a Land Framework for Bauchi's Minerals

Bauchi at the Multipolar Crossroads is a research and policy publication examining the choices confronting Bauchi State as it navigates a changing global economic order. It explores the relationship between absorptive capacity, fiscal sovereignty, natural-resource extraction, institutional strength, and economic transformation, asking a central question: can Bauchi convert its resources, strategic position, and emerging opportunities into sustained, broad-based prosperity rather than remain primarily a site of extraction?

The report frames Bauchi’s challenge not simply as attracting capital or exploiting natural resources, but as developing the institutions, fiscal capacity, infrastructure, productive systems, and policy discipline required to retain and multiply the value generated within the state. Through this lens, it considers the choices that will shape Bauchi’s trajectory between economic ascension and extraction.