Kaduna Northern Leaders Meeting: How Priority Was Grossly Misplaced

•Don’t Take Northern Youths For Granted, Danjuma Cautions

• You Have Disappointed Us, CNG

• Curb Insecurity and Banditry Not Social Media, Shehu Sani blasts Northern Leaders

By Mike Odeh James

They came from all the parts of the North. Among the traditional rulers at the meeting are the Emirs of Hadejia, Katsina, Kano and Gombe. Others are those of Gummi, Kaltungo, Gwandu, Bauchi, Zazzau, and the Etsu Nupe as well as Gbon Gwom Jos.

Political appointees at the meeting include the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu; the Chief of Staff to the President, Prof. Ibrahim Agboola Gambari; Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed; that of FCT, Mohammed Bello; as well as other top government officials.

Governors from the 19 Northern States or their representatives were at Sir Kashim Ibrahim House in Kaduna last Monday, though conspicuously absent were the Taraba State Governor, Darius Ishaku; the Governor of Benue state, Samuel Ortom.

The Governors, political office holders, religious and traditional leaders from the North who attended the Northern Leaders Forum have since come under ceaseless criticisms for their stance on the #ENDSARS Protests

The Northern leaders, who at the end of their meeting at Kashim Ibrahim House condemned the #ENDSARS protests labeling it as “subversive” with a separatist agenda, also claimed that the protests were a ploy for regime change.

A communiqué issued at the end of the said meeting and read by Governor Simon Lalong of Plateau, partly reads:

“The meeting rejects and condemns the subversive actions of the EndSARS protests. The superlative agitations and other change-regime actions outside the ballot Box soon take advantage of the peaceful protests to push for their separatist agenda. The meeting endorsed the indivisibility, indissolubility and oneness of the Nation.”

The Northern Leaders also threw their weight behind the moves by the Federal Government to curtail the use of social media in the wake of the protests.

The communiqué also highlighted this when it stated that “The meeting took note of the devastating effect of the uncontrolled social media in spreading fake news. Therefore, calls for major control mechanisms and censorship of the social media practice in Nigeria.

But in a swift reaction, Shehu Sani, a former senator, blasted the Northern leaders for their hypocrisy.

“Northern Governors; their kinsmen are being slaughtered daily by bandits and insurgents; their people are daily being kidnapped and impoverished by ransom, their women raped and their villages are under siege. Their people live in fear and funerals yet, Social Media is their problem.”

For Abdulazeez Lawal, the spokesman of Coalition of Northern Groups, CNG, it is disappointing that leaders of the North gathered together just to discuss things that really do not concern the North.

Abdulazeez said, “The CNG and indeed the vast majority of the cultured northerners are disappointed that such a meeting of northern governors and traditional leaders, elected representatives and top federal government officials from the North should find it more important to dwell on #EndSARS and social media and neglecting the more serious issues of security, youth restiveness, unemployment, poverty, dwindling fortunes of agriculture and general economic decline.

“We are disappointed that such a meeting should lack the courage to make clear pronouncements on the unprovoked attacks on northerners and their properties at a time when their southern counterparts are proposing claims of trillions of Naira in compensation for their people.

We are disappointed that the meeting lacked the requisite statesmanship to define the northern position with regards to the falsified reports around the fictitious attacks on Lekki protesters that is causing the nation international worries.

However, Danjuma Sarki, a youth leader and the President of Arewa Youth For Development and Progress, AYDP, lampooned the Northern Leaders for their support for intention to regulate the social media.

He said it is the intention of the Northern Leaders to keep the North in perpetual darkness and backwardness.

Sarki wondered why the leaders are not tackling the issues of insecurity, kidnapping, banditry, Almajiri system which have been bastardized over the years. He also raised alarm that the leaders are not perturbed with the rising poverty in the North and the growing rate of school drop outs and illiteracy.

The AYDP warned the Northern Leaders not to take for granted the fact that Northern Youths did not show much interest in #ENDSARS crisis, adding that the youths from the North fully supported the protesters.

He further warned that if the leaders from the North are not careful, the youths in the North would embark on protests that would have a more devastating effect than the #ENDSARS protests.

Similarly, the President of Campaign For Democracy, Abdul Bako Usman, warned the leaders against their support to gag the social media. He explained that attempts to put embargo on the social media would only spell doom for Nigeria’s democracy, which allows freedom of speech as recognized by the Constitution.

“When the governors say there are certain platforms that carry fake news, what will citizens say about governors that make campaign promises but never keep to them? Is that not fake news?”, Bako asked.

The rights activist further explained that governments abused the social media when they fail to keep to their campaign promises.

In the same vein, a former member of the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) Jigawa State, Sanusi Kazaure, said there are more pressing issues disturbing the country, saying “bad governance, insecurity, banditry, kidnapping and terrorism should be the priority of governors, rather than talking about censorship of the social media.“

The Northern Elders Forum, NEF, is another forum that came down hard on those who attended the Kaduna meeting.

According to Dr. Hakeem Baba Ahmed, who serves as the forum’s spokesperson, NEF is very disappointed that the meeting organized in Kaduna with Northern Governors, high-level Federal Government officials and traditional rulers barely made mention of the insecurity of our communities in the North.

Baba Ahmed said: “That meeting missed a historic opportunity to acknowledge that northern communities are in dire need of improved security, and to give firm and specific assurances that our leaders care about Northern lives and will take steps to protect us.”

NEF said it took particular note of the pivotal roles of governors and traditional rulers and leaders at the meeting, “who are thoroughly familiar with daily assaults by insurgents, bandits and kidnappers on Northerners.

“These are leaders who should have understood the high hopes which northerners attached to a meeting of that nature in Kaduna, and they should understand that the impression left by that meeting and the frenzy of activities in parts of the south involving some northern leaders to show sympathy for damage from hoodlums leaves only one conclusion in the minds of northerners: Northerners lives do not matter.”

Analysts and political observers especially from the North are of the opinion that the meeting of the Northern Leaders in Kaduna last week was an affront not only to the North but to the country as a whole.

They warned that while the North, which has over 75% of the total landmass of Nigeria and about 57% of the population, has the highest number of out of school children in the world.

Statistics also shows that despite the fact that the North held on to power at the centre more than the other regions of the country, its population remains the poorest in the world.

Currently, the North is the most underdeveloped region in the country as well as home to four major crises in Africa namely, the Boko Haram Crisis, Fulani Herdsmen and Farmers clashes, the banditry in the Northwest and it is the kidnap capital of Africa if not the world.

It is with this view that most Northerners have expected that their leaders would sit down and discuss how to end the malaises bedeviling the region and not play the ostrich by blaming the #ENDSARS movement.