By Ujah Simon, Kaduna
Group under the guise of Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG), have expressed disappointment over the resolution of Northern States Governor Forum’s meeting held in kaduna last Monday.
The body also said the vast majority of the cultured northerners are disappointed on northern governors meeting and traditional leaders, elected representatives and top federal government officials from the North in the forum.
The CNG made the assertion during a press conference convened in Arewa House in kaduna on Wednesday on the aftermath of the ENDSARS Protests and matters arising.
The coalition statement presented by its spokesman Abdulazeez Suleiman, said that “having monitored the recent spring of protests across the country and playing a major role in stabilizing matters, it’ll first and foremost extend condolences and sympathy to all northern communities that suffered casualty in terms of life and properties. “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” they said.
The group also “It is disappointing that the meeting fail to see as priority the need to send a delegation to ascertain the extent of damage and to console the affected northerners in the southern states.”
We are disappointed that the meeting did not have the presence of mind to discuss the necessity of compensating the innocent northerners who were unnecessarily attacked, assaulted, killed, displaced and deprived”, they added.
According to CNG while hopping that the northern governors and other leaders would rethink the apparent weak position adopted at the meeting and redeem their failure to articulate a more favourable northern position, the CNG said it wished to expressed reservations regarding the two committees set up, their stated functions and the all important issue of implications.
“In the past, several committees have been variously charged with tasks of recommending the way forward for the region. But regrettably, a lot of the recommendations, viable though, they may be, have characteristically been consigned to the dust bin of history.”
While hoping that it will be different, at least this time around, we also expect that genuinely patriotic and productive minds would be engaged for meaningful input particularly for the Youth and Civil Society Committee which is expected to engage the youths with a view to addressing their pressing demands to put to rest their agitations”, they said.
Earlier, CNG said it agreed with NSGF on the need for quick resolution of the overdrawn ASUU misunderstanding with the Federal Government, and to a large extent, on social media platforms that have been turned into avenues for dissemination of fake and dangerous information.
Accordingly, the coalition stated that while also welcome the decision to sustained periodic engagements with other segments of northern leadership and critical stakeholders, it’s however in seriously disagreed with the forum on many other points, and found the NSGF meeting fundamentally flawed in many respect.
CNG added that “Essentially, the agenda for the NSGF meeting was grossly misplaced in the sense that it accorded more relevance to the #EndSARS and the social media failings which should by far not be the major focus for concern for the North at the moment.. It assure all victims from northern Nigeria, that the CNG is collating information on the circumstances, nature and extent of the negative impact of the protests on them, “and shall within the the next few days, come up with a comprehensive framework for ensuring the enforcement of their rights and accruable benefits as well as their future safety wherever they live in Nigeria.
