The Northern leaders, who met under the auspices of the Arewa Elders Forum, said that even though they can afford to survive in a divided Nigeria, they have resolved not to be the cause of the breakup of the country.
One of the leaders of the new group and former Special Adviser to ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo on Food Security, Prof .Ango Abdullahi, told the Hausa service of the British Broadcasting Corporation monitored in Kaduna that the north has always been on its own and will continue to survive without the oil resources from the south.Abdullahi, who was reacting to calls from southern leaders for the convocation of a Sovereign National Conference, said that some people are hiding under the agitation to show to the world that they were tired of staying in a united Nigeria.
“We know this is an old call because it has been on for over 20 years. They have been saying this corporate existence of the country and the Federal system is faulty. They are keen on sitting down to discuss what kind of arrangement would be conducive for Nigerians.
“This is an old call and it is not a new thing… some people are hiding under the guise of this agitation to show that they are tired of staying in a united Nigeria.
“Therefore, we have resolved that we are not going to be the cause of Nigeria breaking up; but if others decided that the country should be divided, and they insisted that Nigeria should break up, we won’t say no because we realized there is nothing we are getting from the current arrangement that other sections of the country are not getting.
“If they insisted, why don’t we sit down and talk? If at the end, everybody agree that Nigeria should be divided and if at the long run, everybody is satisfied that the country should break up, let it be”.
Speaking further on whether the north can stand on its own if the country breaks up, the former Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria said that the North has always been on its own because the poor in the North has always been on his own.
“He (the poor) feeds himself from what he cultivates in the farms and feeds Nigeria up till tomorrow. It is possible if all Northerners would return to what their forefathers did through agriculture with which proceeds they built the North and Nigeria as a whole,” Abdullahi said.
Culled from Nation News.