A chieftain of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and former military governor of Kaduna State, Col. Hameed Ibrahim Ali, has declared that unless the north gets its act together and confront the problems of division among its leaders, the 2015 presidency may still elude the region.
Hameed Ali, who served as secretary of the ACF for seven years, further averred that the north was confused and under siege.
The former Kaduna State governor, in an exclusive interview with LEADERSHIP said: “The north should forget about 2015. Unless we change the strategy and get a party, strengthen the party and make sure that we reach out to our friends in the south and get the ones we can woo, we should just forget about 2015.
“Looking at what is at play now, unless the north gets it act together and really confronts these problems of division among us… but looking at the scenario, today, any right-thinking person would know that the north, politically, has lost out.
“The north has no political party today that it has enough influence over. PDP does not belong to the north anymore. PDP is not influenced by the north anymore.
“In the PDP today, the Obasanjos, the people of the south-south – because they are the ones holding the leadership today – and the south-east decide what happens.
“Northerners do not have any power in the PDP today. What then do you use as a platform to achieve political power? If you don’t have a party you cannot get into power,” he reminded.
Asked the way forward, Ali said: “Northerners must rally round, identify a party that they have influence in and use it as a platform to contest in 2015. Otherwise, no candidate from the north can contest the 2015 election; we are just fooling ourselves if we believe we can wrestle power from the south through the PDP.
“President Goodluck Jonathan will still contest in 2015, because the same court will turn around and say the man could still contest. By this, northerners should just forget about presenting any presidential candidate in PDP let alone winning election. PDP is in the hands of the south, whether we like it or not.”
Speaking on the problems the region is grappling with, Col. Ali noted: “Today in the north, we find ourselves in a very confusing situation. We find ourselves in the midst of insecurity which is not part of us. Before the insecurity got to the present stage, we were the most impoverished set of people in the entire nation.
“I must say again that the typical northerner today is very lazy. Lazy in the sense that, since the discovery of oil, we abdicated our own source of survival, which is farming. We all rushed to benefit from oil – most of us became contractors, most of us became sales men and we completely left where we were prospering.
“Today, we find ourselves in a situation whereby those who own the oil are now saying we are parasites, so we should not benefit from it. We have completely left our own God-given oil and resorted to looking out for the cheapest and easiest way of making a living.
?“If you take the totality of the leadership we have had in the country coming from the north, you will discover that we gathered a lot of money and influence to be able to put the north in a proper position that, today, we should not be talking about poverty.
“Our leadership, both at the national and state levels, has not really taken investment to the people. What we have realized is that everybody that gets to the position of leadership begins to fend for himself, his families and his cronies. We must blame ourselves for the stage we are today; we cannot blame anybody.
“Today, the north is under siege in the sense that insecurity has caused serious problems to the north.
?“Why should we be subjected to this? Unfortunately, our governors are not concerned about the security challenges; what they are bothered about is how much money can come into their coffers that they can steal.
?“We are confused in the sense that… look at the committees that have come up to get things right. Why should we have multiplicity of committees? That shows that we are not even together and we don’t believe in one common approach to the insecurity issues.
?“ACF has been the umbrella organization in the north and, if we are really serious, why can’t everybody come around the forum and use it as a unifying factor. We should rally round ACF and make it better so that we chart a road map,” Col. Ali concluded.