A member of the Northern Elders Forum, NEF, Bashir Othman Tofa, has pointed out why the North would never agitate for Nigeria’s break-up.
Tofa, a former presidential candidate of the defunct National Republican Convention, NRC, said the North has never agitated for the breakup of the country due to its large population.
Speaking when the inauguration of the students’ wing of the Northern Youth Group organised by the Coalition of Northern Youth held at Bayero University in Kano State on Monday, Tofa insisted that the North has no plan for Nigeria’s disintegration.
The Northern elder stated that the region has been playing the role of encouraging Nigeria’s unity because it’s sacrosanct.
He said: “If you look at our population and what we have together is more than what anyone can hope for. So to try to destroy this is certainly a lose-lose situation. That is why we here in the North would never say we want to leave in this country.
“If you examine the situation, you would find out it is only in Northern Nigeria that there is no agitation for the breakup of this country”
“That is why we are the root of this country. If the root is uprooted, the tree will not be there. He then added that so we like to be patient, we like to encourage Nigerians to love their country to be united and tolerate one another. So that we can build a kind of country we like to build.
“It is Northern Nigeria that doesn’t have any specific plan of its own, in case Nigeria is divided. This means we have absolute confidence that being together is the best thing for all of us.
“Our responsibility is to exercise patience to make sure we guide this country to the kind of unity and progress we need to develop into a better country and even become a nation-state.”
