The North Central Consultative Assembly, a political pressure group from the zone, has disowned the Middle Belt Forum on the selection of delegates to the national conference, insisting that the list submitted by the Assembly was the authentic representation of the people of the zone.
Speaking in Minna yesterday, a former Deputy Senate President, Senator Ibrahim Mantu, said that the Assembly had sent the list of delegates to represent the zone to the Presidency and disowned that forwarded by the Prof. Jerry Gana-led Middle Belt Forum.
“I am not aware of any other list from the zone for the conference but I know of a fact that the North Central Consultative Forum has sent the list of those to represent the interest of the people of the zone,” he said.
Receiving the Assembly led by its chairman in a courtesy call at government house, Niger state governor, Dr. Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, said the governors of the zone were not consulted in the selection of delegates by the Middle Belt Forum.
He said: “Nobody consulted me before the nomination was mad. I learnt that one governor was invited to the meeting the governor did not know what was to be discussed. Somebody hijacked the whole process sat down and draw the list.”
Aliyu said he was going to table the matter in the meeting of the governors of the zone, adding that “we have taken things for granted for too long.”
He described the zone as the “nucleus of the nation’s politics,” and that the new Forum should work hard for the unity of the nation.
He assured the Assembly of his support and urged it to carry everybody from the zone along in the discharge of its responsibility, stressing that the group should visit other governors from the zone and familiarise itself with the people.
