The Coalition of Northern Group on Sunday met some northern Civil Society Organizations including students union bodies from the 19 Northern States and Abuja over the disturbing insecurity occasioned by kidnapping, banditry and other related crimes ravaging the region.
The various groups at parley held at the Arewa House, Kaduna, also touched on the embattled Deputy Commissioner of Police, Abba Kyari and Ramon Abbas, also known as ‘Hushpuppi’ saga and warned against not following due process in handling the matter.
According to groups numbering over 50, the sundry kidnapping of schoolchildren by bandits, leading to the closure of schools in the North, is unacceptable.
The ongoing Independent National Electoral Commission’s voter’s registration, they also argued was against northern interest owing to the stringent registration process while calling on northerners to discard their apathy toward the registration exercise.
Signatories to the Communique issued shortly after the meeting are those of Communique Drafting Committee’s Chairman, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, who is also CNG’s spokesman, Ben Major Idoko (CNG), Abdulmalik Usman(NYPA), Abigel Maisamari(Glorious Women), Ahmad Ashir Danmani(NCMN), Amb. Kamaladdeen Kabir(KASCO), Jamila Mohammed Kaduna(Women Empowerment Network), Abdulrahman Abdullahi Sani, Dr. Mohammed Bello Nawaila, among others.
They demanded “a review of the suspension of Mr. Kyari and an immediate reversal to proper administrative procedures relating to discipline.”
On insecurity, they decried the potential threat to educational accessibility and affordability to children of the majority poor, posed by incessant hikes in tuition in several states across the region.
“Concerned about the deteriorating security situation and other threats to education and personal integrity and liberty of eminent northerners, a joint parley of Civil Society Organizations and Non-Governmental Organizations, drawn from the 19 states of the North, held a Roundtable with officials of all states coordinators and students’ wing of the Coalition of Northern Groups.
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“The Roundtable specifically placed premium on the negative impact of the general and pervasive insecurity on the educational potential of the northern region with the widespread and indiscriminate forced closure of schools and distortions to the academic calendar
“It also noted the attempts by some state governments to commercialize or outright sell some institutions of learning at the expense of the region’s educational pursuit,” they added.
On the INEC’s voter’s registration, they “noted that weekly statistics released by the Independent National Electoral Commission shows the North is lagging by a wide margin in the ongoing voter registration and validation exercise.
“They also noted that the apathy by northerners is a direct result of the steady loss of confidence in governance caused by the disappointment by leaders they toiled hard to elect particularly from 2015.
“It was also noted that the new stringent procedure for registration operated by INEC is both unfavourable and monotonous for most northern communities in the absence of adequate voter education and sensitization.
“An element of sabotage that involves deliberately making access to the official registration server difficult or outright impossible was also observed.
“We call on northerners to discard the current registration apathy by reminding them that they can only change a poor or bad leadership by doing what they did in 2015 with their Permanent Voter Cards.”
