The spokesman for the Coalition of Northern Groups, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, tells FRIDAY OLOKOR, in this interview, the mission of the organisation and its stand on restructuring
some people believe your organisation is anti-Buhari (the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) and pro-Atiku (former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar) and that Atiku is financing the Coalition of Northern Groups. What is your response?
It is an unfounded and a misplaced assumption for anybody, whoever that person is, to say the CNG is out to whitewash anybody and smear President Muhammadu Buhari as a person. We all know that northerners do not play the politics of personal attacks. When the North criticises leaders, it is based on their administrations’ performances and never on their persons. Therefore the CNG cannot be seen by work and deeds to be against the person of President Buhari. The CNG only joins other Nigerians who point out that President Buhari’s image and vision are not being served by the quality and competence of many of the people he has assembled.
We believe that those of us who insist that President Buhari’s administration can do much better in managing the security situation and the economy or in the all-important fight against corruption within the laws of the land, and in rebuilding a nation united around the values of justice and honest enterprise cannot be said to be his enemies. Most of us are people who voted for him because we shared his belief that we can live secure lives; that leaders do not have to steal our resources and that our children can live in, and work in a nation they can be proud of.
We have established a standard of judgment as a group that we will not compromise, and its hallmarks are to be respectful and responsible in relationships with leaders at all levels, and to speak truth to power.
I find the assertion that the CNG has any form of affiliations with Atiku Abubakar or his political ambitions, as funny as it is ridiculous. The CNG has never had anything to do with Atiku’s interests or for that matter, the interests of any particular politician.
I can tell you without fear of contradiction that I, as a spokesperson of the group and a critical stakeholder has never met, communicated with, or interacted with Atiku beyond what is in the public domain about him
The North has suffered because of an education imbalance. What are you doing to boost education in the North?
Though no one can deny that subsequent northern leaders have completely derailed from the path for educational pursuit set by the late Premier, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the issue around the level of illiteracy in the North is also grossly overhyped and sensationalised to suit certain interests, particularly from the South.
Former President Goodluck Jonathan did well for the North, building schools for the Almajiri. But it appeared the people were not serious and the whole effort landed in square one. What was responsible?
The people cannot directly be said to be responsible for the subsequent clumsy handling of the Almajiri School Initiative. The truth is that the initiative which was widely acknowledged and accepted by a vast majority of the northern society might have been scuttled by whatever wisdom of the subsequent government.
Are you not concerned about the high number of the destitute from the North in all parts of the region? Some of them sleep under bridges.
The destitute roaming around and homeless people sleeping under bridges are found not only in the North, but everywhere across the world. What matters is how authorities are handling the situation. Of course for jobless and homeless people to populate the community of human beings is not only a regional embarrassment but a national or even global embarrassment.
The Igbo Elders have continued to insist that the 2023 Presidency must go to the South-East. But the CNG recently issued a statement demanding the arrest of a former Governor of Anambra State, Chief Chukwuemeka Ezeife and others.
This is funny. We have no reason whatsoever to hate the Igbos’ or any other ethnic group for that matter. It is just that after taking stock of events unfolding in Nigeria since 2016, noting especially, the unrelenting disturbances created by certain interest groups in the South-East, in the form of the threatening agitation for Igbo presidency as the only alternative to a violent drive for the separate State of Biafra, the CNG concluded that it would be risky to trust this ethnic group which has taken up arms against the Nigerian state three times, with presidential power.
Our concerns are informed by the reality that the embers of this agitation ignited and incessantly fanned by the Indigenous People of Biafra and other authors of mindless violence and separatism who see it as their duty to actualise what their fathers started in 1966, aim to ultimately bring about the realisation of a separate State of Biafra through the force of arms and terrorist tactics.
After watching and studying these events carefully and with considerable restraint and maturity, to the point of condoning and accommodating several unreasonable and unacceptable actions that have been perpetrated by the Igbo against Nigerians collectively, and northerners, in particular, the CNG became convinced that matters had reached a point whereby silence has become complicity and inaction is no longer an option.
We are all aware of the unprovoked evictions, attacks and killings of northerners in various parts of the South-East resulting from the hate campaigns and propaganda being conducted by such regional and ethnic agitators as Mr Ezeife, aimed mainly at instigating reprisals by northerners against people from other parts of the country.
We are also agitated that the perpetrators of this relentless violence are pursuing this agenda of destruction and collective mayhem, fervently hoping it will engulf the entire country and bring about another civil war and mass killings and suffering of innocent people.
Resort to long-practiced tactics of attacks against northerners and agents and symbols of the Federal Government of Nigeria in the South-East in the mindless violence and extremist terrorist actions perpetrated by IPOB, is part of what has made it impossible for the North to remain indifferent or silent in the face of such extreme provocations and insistent drive towards civil strife in the country.
Today, everyone can see that the diabolical scheme planned and exhibited in the actions and clamours of IPOB, supported morally and politically by the vast majority of the pliant and affrighted Igbo elites, politicians, traditional rulers, business persons, and the larger population of the ethnic group has pushed Nigeria to the precipice.
Do you think a political solution can end the crisis in the South-East if the government frees Mazi Nnamdi Kanu?
Not really. No solution can be reasonably hoped to be achieved by just releasing unconditionally a man charged by the state for felony, a man who leads a terror gang and incites violence and sow seeds of hatred against the state and other parts of the country. The solution rather lies in allowing the law to take its course on Kanu’s case or any other individual or group that threatens national peace and security irrespective of his tribe, region or religion.
Critics believe that should Nigeria split, the North would suffer and that’s why the North is against restructuring? Is that true?
The North has nothing to fear from any restructuring process, provided we are involved not as a problem but as partners who have a stake in a Nigeria that works for all of us. The North too has many issues with the operations of the Nigerian state, the only difference is it does not routinely insult and blame elites from other regions for them.
What we are not comfortable with, is the manner in which the current agitations for “restructuring”, “true federalism” and “resource control” are being conducted by other regional agitators that smack of a hidden agenda.
We see these renewed clamour strategies employed to achieve the results that the architects of the coups of the First Republic failed to realise, namely increasing the weight and relevance of the regions to the detriment and expense of the central government, thereby gradually paving the way for complete separation from Nigeria.
We also believe that the above strategies are aimed at diminishing the viability of the North and rendering it incapable of standing on its own two feet and competing favourably with other parts of the country.
It is worrying that the clamour for “restructuring” comes at a time when the verdict from one part of the country is that Nigeria is not working and that it must be renegotiated and restructured if it is to survive and prevent its ultimate destruction.
We also believe that the aim of this self-serving argument is to be advanced to its “logical” conclusion by demanding the adoption of a new national constitution that would reflect a “restructured” Nigeria whereby “true federalism” with “fiscal federalism” would be achieved.
We are convinced and our convictions are being justified by the unfolding scenarios in the country today, that if the ultimate objectives of the South are not met through agitation, propaganda and clamour, the resort will be made to more violent means starting with instigation to more unrest and fanning the embers of religious and ethnic discontent into raging fires of carnage and destruction.
Beyond these concerns, the North welcomes any opportunity to engage all parts of Nigeria in honest and open-ended discussions on constitutional reforms, the operations of our federal structure and national economy, and all issues which represent major sources of grievance.
We want to join others who want to ask why we are paying our legislators so much, whether we need all those in power that take home so much of our resources, why corruption finds it so easy to find space in our judiciary and all critical institutions.
Like all Nigerians, we have questions over the manner our nation operates. We want to work with others to establish a basis for identifying what is a priority, what is essential, what is fair, what is avoidable and what we need to do as a nation to isolate violence from its central position in our lives. We only demand to be involved as genuine partners, not as targets of policies and programmes that are designed to cripple the North.
Our people are hard-working and we have no desire to depend on any section of the country beyond what is made necessary by the logic of an interdependent economy.
We also recognise that restructuring the Nigerian economy involves a tremendous boost in productivity of the assets that the North is blessed with and therefore look forward to a restructuring process that involves our assets and our interests. ,,
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