According to Sulaiman, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed those who are enemies of the north in the south.
Abdulazeez Sulaiman The spokesman of Coalition of Northern Groups, CNG, Abdulazeez Sulaiman, has accused Southern governors of humiliating northerners residing in the region under the guise of intercepting Almajirai.
Sulaiman said the inhumane action of the southernern governors against the northern citizens is their long time agenda against the region which they have been working “strenuously to ensure that the region remains backward, weak, confused and bewildered by myriads of challenges and problems.”
He said this in an interview with VANGUARD.
Below is the Excerpt of the interview:
Reports indicated that some almajirai were intercepted on their way to some southern states. What do you make of that?
When I read such reports I laugh because I know that those said to be apprehended by the southern state governments are not almajiri kids. They are rather everyday northerners who the South humiliate, harass and suppress by hiding behind the name almajiri.
What is happening in the South in the guise of intercepting almajiri is part of a wider agenda to frustrate all northerners, particularly the Hausa/Fulani out of southern Nigeria.
For too long, enemies of the North both foreign and local have worked strenuously to ensure that the region remains backward, weak, confused and bewildered by myriads of challenges and problems.
The current onslaught in the pretext of sending back almajirai, is, therefore, part of a mega but clandestine plot spanning several years. It is one aspect of the plan to dehumanize the North and decapitate it through exploiting its internal weaknesses and cleavages.
What do you make of the repatriation of those headed down South by security agencies in states where they were intercepted?
With the current peculiar situation accentuated by the COVID-19 scare, there is nothing wrong in government taking drastic extra measures to identify people going into their states from other parts of the country and even from other countries of the world.
This vigilance must however not be targeted at just people from a particular part of Nigeria for profiling, dehumanization and vilification. And if need be, authorities can take measures to turn back suspicious persons right at the entry points. It will not be acceptable to drag out people of other ethnicities already settled in communities even long before COVID-19 pandemic.
Southern leaders described the movement of some almajirai down South as being suspicious…
I have pointed out earlier that there is no movement whatsoever of the almajirai who are small kids to the South. The southern leaders want to use the opportunity to humiliate all Hausa/Fulani Muslim northerners residing in, or passing through the South.
We read about a certain faction of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo inciting Southeast governors to deport “almajiri” from their states. This was said without providing the criteria laid down for the identification of who should be termed almajiri.
The southern leaders are merely arrogating to themselves the powers to determine who to accommodate in their midst irrespective of clearly defined constitutional guarantees for citizen residency.
It is regrettable that in the execution of this plan, the consciousness is eroding the southern leaders that for decades, different tribes in Nigeria have been accommodated and tolerated in many parts of the North without discriminatory official actions specifically to intimidate, harass and endanger them, their families, their properties or their trades.
Leaders of the South and other jingoists seem not to bother that their people are so tolerated by the North despite abundant hard evidence that shows how most of them take undue advantage of the region’s tolerant culture to pursue illicit trades.
