The Northern Elders Forum, NEF has been applauded for its staunch support to the order given by the four northern youth groups to Igbos living in the North to relocate to the so-called Republic of Biafra in accordance with their spirit of self-determination. Many politicians of eastern extraction and some state governors had earlier openly criticized the action of the youths, describing it as callous and provocative, capable of plunging the country into chaos and disorder.
But the NEF had for the first time came out openly in support of that move, condemning the governors and other critics of double standards and hypocrisy, choosing always to condemn actions they view from a prism of tribalism as they overlook the excesses or depravities of their kinsmen. Prior to this, northerners have consistently reproached their leaders for complacency and inaction when the interests of their region are being trampled upon and their people persecuted unnecessarily. For this singular action the Northern Elders Forum is being complimented by all and sundry as they had this time around came up appropriately for the defense of their followers.
This is because those in power or at the helms of affairs in the North have previously been pandering to the whims and caprices of southern politicians that set them up as veritable tools for the subjugation of their fellow citizens. Their preoccupation was mainly how to distract and detract the northerners from the course upon which they will realistically attain the actualization of their varied interests. After their people have been done with they will then shed crocodile tears, lamenting the calamities that visited those that had suffered the humiliating loss of their rights and privileges.
That was the lot of Northern leaders. Even military rulers of Northern extraction that succeeded the founding fathers of Nigeria have been variably accused of gross inaction and complacency in developing the vast Northern Region which had obviously struggled to catch up with its three counterparts in the First Republic. The same bunch of people, after bowing out of power, consorted with the southern political elements that had for long been plotting the downfall of what they derogatory referred to as giant North. That was what gave impetus to the politics of tribalism which consequently gave rise to undue nepotism and excessive favoritism.
Subsequently, a detestable dimension of religious bigotry was added to the whole affair making it possible to polarize the North along reprehensible divides. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back and since then the Northern community which hitherto enjoys relative calm, fortified by strong bonds of unity and pervading fraternity, progressively exploded into a huge ball of threatening conflagration, aided by the influx of peoples from other regions and their undue influences.
That sorry state of affairs did not come perchance; it was carefully meditated to create more divisions and cleavages among the peoples bounded by a common destiny in their struggle to emancipate themselves from the shackles of their political detractors from the south. Whenever there seems to be a light at the end of their dark tunnel their unpatriotic and self-seeking leaders will provide an effective obstruction that will seal off their chance of achieving the grand objective.
That’s exactly what is obtaining now with the so-called northern leaders unable to unite and give solid economic and other necessary supports to their people who were totally unprotected from the domination of southern interlopers. Instead, they extend clandestine and covert support to people other than their kinsmen and during elections they overtly cohort with opposition politicians other than the ones wholly shored up by their people.
The purpose of these noxious northern leaders in turning away from their people is to principally deny them utilizing their numerical superiority to elect a president from the region that has the majority.
That was what obtained in 1999 when the so-called leaders connived to foist on the northerners, and the nation at large, two southern presidential candidates belonging to the same ethnic stock, thus thwarting the possibility of the emergence of a more credible and acceptable candidate from the North. In the same vein, the Northern establishment conspired to throw up a defective candidate, in the previous elections, a wishy-washy contraption from their weird political machinery that was easily defeated by the secretly anointed candidate. Needless to say, the North lost out when they deliberately refused to throw their weights behind the most popular candidate hankered persistently by a majority of Northerners.
The struggle for capacity building and economic emancipation of northerners from the domination of southerners had been suffering a serious setback since they had failed to get their acts together by closing their ranks and acting in unison. Unless and until those that do not wish them exit the region they could hardly ever get their hopes fulfilled. The youths quit order to the Igbos is a wake up call to northerners that crave for rapid transformation of the region to actively support its indigenization by giving the northerners the reins of economic and political power.
