Former Kaduna senator, Mr Shehu Sani has advised northern leaders to urgently meet to chart a master plan to tackle years of poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment in the region.
He stated this on Tuesday while speaking against the backdrop of the descent to destruction of public and private properties in the ongoing nationwide protests against hunger.
Protesters across the country have taken to the streets to protest against bad governance which the organisers said would last for 10 days beginning from last Thursday.
But it’s the protest in the north that has shaken the region as protesters are beginning to identify political leaders and party offices of the All Progressives Congress or APC where they are setting them ablaze.
Some in Katsina, Zamfara and Yobe have written letters to the Independent National Electoral Commission or INEC to recall their lawmakers.
Sani said the region has been abandoned for far too long and that the only solution is fixing the problems which starts by converging to discuss the plan and not guns.
He said, “Northern leaders must take lessons from the recent violent uprising in the region.The President must be held to account, but he is not the problem or the solution to the problem.
“The governors, political, business, religious, traditional leaders and the intellectuals of the region must converge and urgently come out with an implementable master plan to tackle the decades of endemic poverty and destitution, Illiteracy, chronic underdevelopment, abject neglect, religious extremism and terrorism that has demonised the region and impoverished its people,” he said.
He stressed that, “Guns and tanks can suppress the flame but not extinguish the fire.
“The monster in our homes was not created in a day.
“The North should look at the mirror and not the telescope.
“We have the cattle to build our wealth, we shouldn’t be looking for a scapegoat,” Sani said.