The Northern Elders Forum’s announcement that it will not support President Bola Tinubu in 2027 has alarmed the Coalition of Concerned Northern Groups, or CCNG.
The remark was characterized by CCNG as “erroneously depicting President Bola Tinubu’s government.”
“The Coalition of Concerned Northern Groups (CCNG) finds it pertinent to respond to the recent statement made public by the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) wrongly depicting the [government of] President Bola Ahmed Tinubu,” stated the group’s president, Muhammad Ibrahim, in a statement released on Saturday.
“The spokesperson of NEF expressed the regret of the forum for supporting and voting for Tinubu without clearly stating why. More so, the group’s spokesperson ratted that the north will not accept a second term for Tinubu.”
He said it was a foolish move on the part of NEF to engage in “such a slander,” given that Nigerians saw the president’s hard work as practically evident.
“It baffles us that the NEF was silent when former President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime killed hundreds of innocent men, women and children when it clamped down on Shi’ite members in Kaduna in 2015. Were they not northerners who were murdered in an extrajudicial manner?
“Was it not during the Buhari regime that the banditry became more prominent in the Northwest, a situation that has virtually killed the farming profession in the region and destroyed lives and property? Yet the NEF never rose against that.”
The president of CCNG said it is disrespectful for the forum to stigmatize the regime rather than give it the benefit of the doubt, pointing out that the nation is just two years into the regime, which began on an extremely rocky footing with many problems to be set right.
“Reviewing the NEF claims that they mobilised the north in favour of President Tinubu, even as his major contender, Atiku Abubakar, was a northerner, cannot be substantiated because they have no such influence over the electorate in the region,” he explained.
