Following the unrelenting insecurity, the Northern Civil Society Forum has  lambasted the Northern States Governors’ Forum (NSGF) for its insensitivity to the plights of northerners and called for the forum to be disbanded immediately.

In a press conference held in Kaduna over the weekend, the forum’s coordinator, Alhaji Danazumi Mohammed, however, commended the Adamawa State governor Murtala Nyako for his position on the security challenges facing the country, noting that the governor is a true friend of President Goodluck Jonathan who means well for him and the nation.

Describing the NSGF as ineffective, Mohammed condemned the chairman of the NSGF and governor of Niger State, Babangida Aliyu, for criticising the governor’s memo on the basis of absence of evidence:

“What facts does he want again when the killings and abductions are now a recurring decimal in the north,” he queried.

Noting that the memo was apt, Mohammed further said:  “The Northern Governors’ Forum which he (Aliyu) chairs, as far as we are concerned, is a toothless bulldog and it should be disbanded as they (governors)  have openly proved to be insensitive to the plights of northerners.

“Since the day the insurgency started, has the vice president, Senate president or Speaker of the House of Representatives visited the North East to commiserate with victims? Even the recent crisis in the Nasarawa and Benue axis, has any northern leader gone there to empathize and see things for themselves? Let us not even talk of the Northern Governors Forum; have they redeemed the N100 million pledge they made to wives of officers killed in Nasarawa State?”

The group condemned the attacks on Nyako following his memo to the northern governors, adding that since the memo appeared in the media, it has brought to the fore the friends and enemies of President Jonathan.

“The forum came to the conclusion that Nyako though from the opposition camp is indeed a true friend of Mr. President, they urged President Jonathan to urgently call Governor Nyako personally and thrash out some of the contents of his memo in the interest of the country. It beats our imagination why the message was not being addressed but the messenger.”

While he recalled that Nyako was also once attacked by the insurgents, he further wondered why “Nigerians and even some northern governors attack and condemn the man who wrote the memo.”

As a onetime military governor and a former Defense chief Nyako knows it all as such he should be commended rather than vilified. As a beneficiary of the Nigerian nation he cannot seat down and watch the nation go down hence his memo. They noted that besides being the chief executive of his state he is also an elder statesman who has seen it all, as such he can speak for the north, since the top northern political leaders such as the Vice President have kept mute and have not openly demonstrated proactive measures to find lasting solutions to the insurgency in the north.

The forum described the memo as well thought out and apt considering the spate of killings going on in the country today. We strongly believe that the memo was not meant to incite one section of the country against the other as being alluded by some prominent northerners who live in the comfort of their houses in Kaduna while millions are under siege in the north east.

Alhaji Mohammed urged the Federal Government to do more on the security challenges facing the country, as its current approach to the security situation was actually why Nyako said in his memo that the federal government should be held responsible for the activities of insurgents in the North-East and the sad killings, wanton destruction, murder and kidnapping of school children as well as other horrendous activities of Boko Haram.

(Leadership)o