North-central remains with Northern Nigeria – Forum

A North-central Stakeholders’ Forum has disassociated itself from a claim that the zone exist as a middle belt region separate from the North.

 

The group was reacting to a media report credited to one Isuwa Dogo, who claimed the existence of a certain Middle Belt region.

 

Reacting in a statement signed by the chairman of the North Central Stakeholders Forum, Mohammed A. Mohammed, expressed reservation to Dogo’s “annexing an entire unwilling population into this illegal carve out.”

 

The statement conceded that any attempt to temper with the official delineation of the country and carve out territory is strictly a matter for the authorities to decide.

 

“In his sponsored desperation to taunt and rebel against a certain community of northern Nigeria, Dogo only ends up exposing a brewing plan to illegally demarcate part of the country and name it the Middle Belt.

 

“We are therefore concerned that this attempt at extra official demarcation of territory has failed to define the segmentary factors necessary to such annexation. For instance it is necessary for Dogo and his sponsors to clarify whether their plan contemplates a Middle Belt in terms ethnicity, or Middle Belt religion, or Middle Belt geography.

 

“He ought to clearly clarify if he was thinking of carving out a Middle Belt solely for Christians due to the intrusive presence of CAN in the “Middle Belt affair.

 

“He might be thinking of breaking out his dream-region in terms of geography which would be the height of irresponsibility to attempt annexing unwilling communities from the North West, North East and merging them with parts of the North Central all by himself.

 

“This is important because by openly declaring that the Middle Belt  is an “independent, separate entity” in a report in the Sun newspaper edition of Sunday August 11, 2019, Dogo might be contemplating including a large portion of communities that cut across religion and ethnicity in the cessation plot unwillingly.

 

“As decent people who are also conscious of such treaties and conventions as the United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that promote and protect the right of a people to self-determination, we hereby categorically dissociate from such plots and reaffirm allegiance to the lawfully recognized North central geopolitical zone.

 

“By this, we hereby categorically state for the avoidance of any doubt, that we remain with the North Central and shall never associate with any move that portends to polarize this Communion recognized by the Nigerian state.”

 

The forum said it align with the position of such statesmen and elders as Ambassador Yahaya Kwande, Dr Yima Sen and others that the North-central remains as officially demarcated, named and recognized.

 

“Finally, we remind such internal collaborators as Dogo and their Lagos sponsors that similar conspiracies to polarize the cohesion of the North with the aim of gaining undue ascendancy over the region have failed and so shall this on.”