—Northern elders to Jonathan:
—Ready to go to war if…
A Conference of Leaders and Elders of Northern Nigeria ended in Kano yesterday with a call on President Goodluck Jonathan to resign from office and allow for a “more robust” Sovereign National Conference that would discuss all possible issues as the nation moves to hold another constitutional conference.
The elders also warned that the North was fully ready for any eventualities, including going to war, to safeguard the integrity and corporate existence of the Nigerian nation, as they did in the last 50 years or so.
The call for the president to step down or sacrifice his remaining days in office and allow for a Sovereign National Conference was made by Barrister Solomon Dalong, and it received a standing ovation by all the leaders in attendance at the conference.
Dalong said: “If President Jonathan refuses to step down for the Sovereign National Conference by 25th March, 2015, the country should move in and decorate the members of the conference as the only duly recognised leaders in the nation.”
He said instead of Jonathan holding a “colourless and unpopular” conference, he should concern himself with how the nation’s US$20 billion got missing without any explanation and how insecurity has become the major source of concern of the citizenry, specifically in the North.
Also speaking at the summit, a former federal permanent secretary and leader of the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kaduna state, Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, noted that Northerners were going to the National Conference as mere spectators who have virtually nothing to contribute, wondering why, at a time when hundreds of innocent lives were being mercilessly slaughtered by Boko Haram the president was talking about holding a “useless conference.”
He asked: “This is a conference that will have neither the time nor the clout to take up the alarming rise of violence in the lives of Northerners and it will not have the capacity to ask how the Nigerian military, the same military that fought civil war, the same military that took peace to Liberia, Sierra Leone and the same that earned and acquired an international reputation during peace-keeping and paid for that reputation with blood, lives and limbs today it cannot ask how the military cannot protect children from being slaughtered in their schools, or young girls being abducted or entire villages being razed to the ground routinely.”
Baba-Ahmed added: “The conference will be engaged in quarrels over composition of committees, rules and agenda, while northern delegates will ask who exactly is killing them in towns and villages in Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Benue, Plateau, Nasarawa and Kaduna states.”
He noted that the North would participate in this conference at best as a spectator, or at worse a helpless victim of conspiracy to further exploit its weakness.
“The region today is being reduced to supporting others’ agenda, because they are going there with their hands tied at the back.
“For this you should be ready to stage a walk-out on the conference; at least it will show that it is no longer a national conference.”
Meanwhile, elders from Borno state who attended the conference said they had reached the “point of no return” because of the killings taking place in their area.
They complained that the federal government had completely abondoned them.
Leader of the Borno elders, Zanna Hassan Boguma, who was speaking during the conference, argued that the government’s refusal to rescue the state from the insurgency was not because there was no resource or power to do so but because the government lacked the political will to act.
He told the Northern elders that since the government at the centre had completely failed in its responsibilities, they should wake up from their slumber and do what is right, “because today it might be Borno state, but tomorrow it might be you in your places. So, do something now.”
Boguma noted that the North was being turned to a war zone, “a war that is meaningless and fought behind shadows,” arguing: “That is why until those who were named as supporters, financiers and allies of Boko Haram are brought to justice, and until the political Boko Haram are apprehended and prosecuted and until the operation to contain this madness is sincerely handled, lives of our innocent villagers will continue to be sacrificed.”
He said the security challenges in the North-east, particularly Borno, called for a serious concern not just from the citizenry of the area but also from all Nigerians.
“Thanks to women across South and other foreign nations for protesting against the killings,” he said.
A former Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Alhaji Yusuf Maitama Sule, in his speech, wondered why the killings in the North continued unabated.
“Is somebody up to something?” he asked. “But whatever it is there must be judgment day and justice to whoever is behind these merciless killings.”
Yusuf, who is also the Danmasanin Kano, urged Northerners regardless of their religious differences and tribal backgrounds to forge a common front so that together they would get back what was right for them.
