Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) has lamented what it termed unchecked escalating security situation that is crippling the Northern Nigerian economic and educational viability leaving 27,000 dead, millions displaced and thousands dispossessed.
This is contained in a communique issued by its spokesman Abdullazeez Suleiman after this year’s annual retreat that commenced on Friday, 12th August, 2022, with national and state executives of the CNG and executives of its students wing from the 19 northern states in attendance.
The communique noted that the rise in crime and violence in the North are associated with the disabling level of poverty, weak, inefficient, ineffective and insufficient government response, absence of political will and capacity in addition to defence corruption.
The retreat noted with concern the inevitability of the setting in of a serious humanitarian crisis that potentially threatens not only the North, or Nigeria, but the entire Sub-Saharan Africa.
It noted that the decade-long Boko Haram conflict with no end in sight has led to one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises with an estimated 27,000 people, most of them civilians, killed.
It also noted that some 8.4 million people in the north-east states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe will need humanitarian aid in 2022. Of these, 2.2 million are internally displaced; 1.5 million are returnees who lack essential services and livelihoods; and 3.9 million are members of communities affected by their hosting of internally displaced people. This figure also includes the majority (an estimated 733,000) of the 1 million people in areas currently inaccessible to international humanitarian actors.
On banditry, the coalition noted that the north-central and north-west zones are afflicted with a multidimensional crisis rooted in long-standing tensions between ethnic and religious groups and involves attacks by criminal groups and banditry such as kidnapping and grand larceny along major highways.
It said that these rampaging gangs of heavily armed criminals continue to terrorise northwest and central states with audacious regularity and unchecked impunity stripping the government of its prerogative for the use of force and consequent loss of control of the nation’s land borders, forests, highways, railways and airways.
It observed that since January 2020, about 50,000 people fled from their homes in the northwest alone, according to the International Organization for Migration and that more than 80,000 additional people have fled to neighbouring Niger Republic over the past two years.
The retreat also noted that Nigeria currently faces considerable corruption risk across its defence institutions, with extremely limited controls in operations and procurement.
“Though oversight mechanisms are in place, they often lack coordination, expertise, resources, and adequate preparation and willingness to fully perform their role. We note that corruption has an undeniable impact on the current security situation resulting in the waste of billions of dollars’ worth of public funds through corrupt defence procurement practices and the abuse of the opaque security funding system known as “security votes,” it alleges.
It noted that all over Northern Nigerian communities, hunger is stalking millions of homes, inflation is making life difficult by the day, people are losing jobs, businesses are closing down, infrastructure is decaying, young people are losing hope, hospitals are full of people who suffer mysterious illnesses, and they cannot afford the fees. This situation, it claims exacerbates the security situation and poses a severe threat of greater conflict.
On the 2023 general elections, the retreat resolved to call on the northern voters to remain ever vigilant and resist the temptation to vote across political party, region, tribe or religious basis and instead, choose to install a credible leadership that could see the nation out of its current situation and to demand from every candidate seeking northern votes to provide comprehensive programmes for the development of the region and protection of Northern interests around security and the economy.
The retreat resolved to reiterate the CNG’s position against undue interference by the international community, particularly the United Nations in the internal security affairs of the country, and to caution the UN to desist from allowing some of its officials to drag it into international disrepute by interfering in particularly, the matter of the trial of the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu. It also cautioned Nigerian authorities against succumbing to undue pressure from whatever quarter so as to avoid setting a dangerous precedent in the country.
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