Atiku to northern leaders: We must resist those trying to divide us along ethnic, religious lines

Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar says the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) must return to its founding mission of uniting the north and driving a development-focused agenda that reflects the vision of the late Ahmadu Bello.

Speaking on Friday in Kaduna at the 25th anniversary celebration of the ACF, Abubakar said the forum was established not only to consolidate regional unity but also to revive the north’s long-standing agenda of education, agriculture and industrial growth.

Abubakar said the north must confront its developmental stagnation with renewed urgency.

“The major issue with our unity is our failure to manage our diversity,” he said.

“The north is not the most diverse part of the world. Our pristine northern leadership has always recognised and admitted to our diversity.

“We should be thinking of how to make our diversity work for our development. We must muster both the courage and the political will to overcome the many obstacles to our unity, and we know them.

“Some of the obstacles that we may not know very well are the subtle and sophisticated subversion by our adversaries who are constantly working to drive a wedge between us, often fabricating stories and capitalising on our fears of the other, using technology to sow seeds of discord.

“Their target is our God-given wealth. We have seen the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and we must not relent.

“We need to have a leadership with the ability to accommodate the various ethnic and religious groups, in whose hands all can feel safe, and who will be fair and equitable in the distribution of natural resources as well as all other opportunities in the country.

“We have seen how the north remembers its true leaders like Sir Ahmadu Bello, gone for a long time but still remembered every day.

“Let us ask ourselves, how would we like to be remembered after we have gone—as people who made the necessary sacrifices for the rest of us, or as people who seized the opportunities and only buttered their bread?

“If there is any time for the North to unite, it is now, and it is my ardent hope that we should resist those trying to divide us along ethnic or religious lines and rise above these differences; look at the challenges on the horizon and come together as the one people we have always been.”