The Coalition of Northern Groups, CNG, on Wednesday accused the South-West of attempting to overthrow President Muhammadu Buhari through the RevolutionNow protest called by the former presidential candidate of African Action Congress, AAC, Omoyele Sowore.
CNG claimed that the RevolutionNow was a SouthWest conspiracy, hence Northerners refused to take part in the protest.
Recall that the Department of State Services, DSS, had arrested Sowore over the weekend for calling for the protest.
Despite his arrest, the protest was held in some states across the country.
However, spokesperson of CNG, Malam Abdul-Azeez Sulaiman in a statement explained that the group’s decision not to be part of the RevolutionNow marches across the nation was because “the North will not be part of any international conspiracy supported by South Westerners to destabilize the country.”
The statement reads: “It is quite unfortunate that the South-West which has been the single major beneficiary of the Buhari administration should also be in the forefront of efforts to discredit and bring him down by all means. This can be seen in the manner in which the bulk of political, cultural, religious and traditional leadership is standing solidly against the government with its open support for call for a violent overthrow of the Buhari government by the #Revolutionow organizers.
“In particular, such individual beneficiaries of the government as Bola Tinubu, Fashola, Fayemi, Aregbesola, and others largely from the South-West were nowhere to be seen when their people and the southern-based media ignited tensions over the government’s Ruga initiative.
“These same beneficiaries appear today in implicit support of the proposed insurrection by maintaining conspiratorial neutrality while other southern influencers like Wole Soyinka, Bisi Akande, Falana, etc explicitly back the organizers”, the northern coalition stated.
The group also called for an end to the Yoruba, Northern alliance.
It added: “We also wish to ask the president if in all honesty he still considers the South Western players as true friends who are genuinely desirous of his success. He should ask himself if the treatment he is receiving from them is worth the attention he had given the South West which involved colliding with his northern brethren to the point of elevating the status of June 12 as appeasement.
“To the entire northern leaders and elite, we categorically say that the current political alignment with the South-West is not paying and it never will.
“The vital task at this point is for the northern political leadership to renegotiate its current alliance with the South-West which has never been North’s political ally The alliance is already turning out to be unhealthy.
“We are calling on the northern elders and leaders to review the region’s position by realigning with our traditional political friends which had served the whole nation for decades before the coming of this unholy and unprofitable union with the South-Western block.
“This has become necessary with the way the South-West is going about the current friendship by being more openly antagonistic to northern interests even while they are the major beneficiaries of the Buhari administration. They, at the slightest of pretenses, openly denigrate the North, its people, its leadership and culture which must not be allowed to continue.
“The CNG, therefore, calls on the current leadership of the Northern Elders Forum under Professor Ango Abdullahi to mobilize relevant stakeholders towards bringing an end to the political partnership with the South-West and embracing the North’s initial political allies”.
