Northern Elders Plot Against National Confab…Accuses Jonathan, OBJ Of Decimating The Region

Northern leaders and elders Mondayday gathered in Kano with an agenda to plot against the forth coming National Conference. Besides, the Northern leaders are blaming former President Olusegun Obasanjo and President Goodluck Jonathan for what they term the political woes of the region which are now manifesting in different frontiers including terrorism, lack of unity, drop in economic and political influence as well as poverty among others.

The leaders who met under the banner of Conference of Leaders and Elders of Northern Nigeria at Tahir Guest Palace, Kano include Chairman of Northern Elders Forum, Prof Ango Abdullahi, Deputy Chairman of Board of Trustee of Arewa Consultative Forum, AVM Mukhtar Mohammed; former Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Dr. Yusuf Maitama Sule, Wantaregh Paul Unongo, Dr. Hakeem Baba Ahmed, Prof. Auwalu Yadudu, Alhaji Ibrahim Babakowa, Alhaji Abubakar Tsav, Dame Pauline Tallen, Alhaji Bashir Tofa, Alhaji Nuhu Ribadu,  Alhaji Yusuf Alli, and Dr Abubakar Siddique Mohammed among others.

Unveiling the mood of the meeting, Dr. Hakeem Baba –Ahmed, in his paper entitled “The North: The Past in the Future” recalled that the present pitiable position of the North began under President Obasanjo. “Within the first four years of his two terms, Obasanjo had completely dismantled the northern political establishment that created him and the northern political elite has been on the defensive since then”, he stated.

He recalled that after the 2011 elections, the North had become politically decimated and its leaders at their weakest moment, adding that “Of all the power blocs that could resist him (President Jonathan), the weakest is the northern bloc. A dangerous insurgency has developed from within it and it has been powerless to fight it or to get the president to fight it with better result. Its politicians are generally hostile to him (President Jonathan)  but their hold on their people is weak. The region has been badly damaged by ethno- religious divisions, suspicions and conflicts. Its economy is crumbling by the day.”

“Its attempt to cobble together with the South West a broader political opposition holds some promise, but this promise can be subverted by deepening the faultiness around the region’s pluralism. In short, the North is powerless to resist” he added.

Focussing on the National Conference, he regretted that President Jonathan had gone ahead with the National Conference in spite of its major fault lines, saying that these shortfalls include its non- sovereign nature, its inability to bring about a brand new constitution and its failure to submit itself to a referendum and its composition among others. He said the list of delegates published recently has further set the North against the South, alleging also that “ it is offending Nigerian Muslims  with roughly 198 delegates while Christians have 294 delegates”

He charged Northerners in the delegate list to the Conference to insist, before the commencement of the conference, that the offensive imbalance between Muslims and Christians  to the conference be addressed. He charged them  to walk out of the conference if their demands were unaddressed adding that every Northerner who  walks out  of the conference robs the conference of the very little creditability it has and denies the conveners the prospect of claiming that they had held a National Conference.

In his remarks, Dr. Yusuf Maitama Sule recalled the unity and oneness of the people of the North in the past, saying that it was responsible for their glorious and peaceful era in the years past.

He regretted that “In all my sixty years of politics, I have never seen what I am seeing today. Today, there is insecurity in the North. There is poverty in the North. There is lack of unity in the North. We don’t trust one another. There is no leadership”

In his own submission, retired Air Vice Marshal Mukhtar Mohammed said “you all would agree with me that there is no nation that is loosing hundreds and hundreds of innocent lives every day, properties, suffering attacks on markets, towns , villages, on the roads that would come and start thinking about other things than how to address these issues.”

Painting a pathetic picture of their suffering in recent years, Borno Elders Forum in a goodwill message delivered by the Zanna of Boguma of Borno, Alhaji Zanna Hassan Boguma said “the current security challenges that we are battling in the North East of Nigeria and particularly Borno State calls for serious concern not just from the citizens of the affected states but from Nigerians in general.”

Zanna who delivered the message on  behalf of Ambassador Usman Gahji Galtimari, the Chairman of Borno Elders Forum, lamented that entire communities were being wiped out in the affected states while places of worship were destroyed without recourse to even women, children and the elderly.

“We have seen hell; our people are constantly decimated. Our towns and villages razed, properties destroyed schools and places of worship burnt even innocent travellers were not spared”, he declared.

He condemned the continued silence of the federal government and the deliberate non -implementation  of the reports of on insurgency starting with the Abdullahi  Sarki Murtar report,  Galtimari report as well as other reports. He decried the fact that since the commencement of the crisis, only the state government has been providing relief materials.“We Northerners must come together and collectively speak with one voice” he insisted adding that “Only our collective will can end this tortuous crisis in the region.”

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