Unless religious intolerance and social injustice are addressed in the northern part of the country, the region will never record significant development politically, socially and economically like its southern counterpart.
Prominent academic and legal practitioner, Barrister Solomon Selcap Dalung, made this assertion while delivering a paper entitled ‘The Quest for Peaceful Co-existence in Northern Nigeria’ at a seminar organised by the National Council of Muslim Youths Organizations (NACOMYO) in Bauchi.
Dalung, a lecturer at the University of Jos, lamented the endemic security challenges and economic backwardness faced by the north, ascribing? them to the current disunity among the people of different? religious and ethnic groups in the region. He called? on the northern elite to go back to the drawing boards and work patriotically to save the area.
He particularly blamed northern politicians for the present crises bedeviling the region such as that of the Boko Haram and ethno-religious clashes in some states, saying their failure to eradicate poverty and high rate of unemployment had escalated the problems.
The university teacher therefore urged northern leaders to set up a poverty eradication commission with head office in Kaduna and branch offices in all the states of the north so as to? introduce human empowerment programmes that can address the current restiveness and insecurity confronting the region.
On the agitation for power shift to the north in 2015, Barrister Dalung advised the northern political elite to shun selfishness and produce a credible person of integrity to be the candidate of the region.