Northern governors on Monday issued a robust warning that the area dangers shedding its future to worsening insecurity and deepening poverty until leaders take pressing and decisive motion.
Chairman of the Northern States Governors’ Discussion board (NSGF) and Gombe State Governor, Muhammadu Yahaya, delivered the warning at a joint assembly of the Discussion board and the Northern Conventional Rulers Council in Kaduna.
Yahaya mentioned the North now faces “the grim actuality of insecurity and poverty that seeks to undermine our very existence.”
The 2-day assembly, held on the Kaduna State Authorities Home, introduced collectively all 19 governors, conventional rulers, safety chiefs, and civil society representatives in what has been described as a final push for a unified response to terrorism, banditry, and social decline throughout the area.
Governor Yahaya burdened that future generations will choose present leaders not by the variety of initiatives they inaugurate, however by whether or not they can “bequeath a Northern Nigeria they will actually name house.”
He recommended President Bola Tinubu for his “sturdy management and steadfast dedication to Nigeria’s safety, sovereignty and territorial integrity,” notably in ongoing rescue operations for kidnapped schoolchildren.
The governor prolonged condolences to the households of pupils kidnapped in Kebbi, Kwara, Kogi, Kano, Niger and Sokoto, in addition to victims of current Boko Haram assaults in Borno and Yobe, noting that assaults on colleges, “the bedrock of our kids’s future,” signify an assault on the area’s future.
Warning that insecurity “spares nobody—poor or wealthy, Muslim or Christian,” Yahaya known as for an finish to political divisions and urged leaders to unite to “make sure the very survival of the North and Nigeria at massive.”
He additional known as for the rejection of divisive rhetoric, emphasising that the disaster is fuelled not solely by felony exercise but in addition by underdevelopment, illiteracy, weak useful resource administration, local weather change, and the abandonment of tens of millions of Almajiri and out-of-school kids.
Excessive on the agenda was the renewed demand for the creation of state police. Reaffirming the NSGF communiqué of 10 Might 2025, the governors insisted that state policing stays “a important and efficient mechanism” for tackling fashionable safety threats and urged the Nationwide Meeting to expedite the required constitutional amendments.
Conventional rulers had been inspired to make use of their affect as stabilising forces, whereas spiritual leaders had been urged to evangelise tolerance and chorus from inflammatory statements. Political leaders, the Discussion board warned, should cease exploiting ethnic or spiritual identities for political benefit.
Safety businesses had been tasked to strengthen intelligence gathering and guarantee swift operational responses, whereas the judiciary was urged to ship speedy felony justice.
In a joint declaration, the governors pledged to collaborate intently with the Federal Authorities beneath President Tinubu “to show the tide and guarantee lasting peace and stability for our area and the nation at massive.”