The Northern States Governors’ Forum (NSGF), in collaboration with the Northern Traditional Rulers Council, have agreed to pursue a coordinated regional strategy, combining military force with judicial efficiency and social welfare reforms to tackle insecurity in the region.
They agreed that the region is facing existential threat of escalating terrorism and deepening poverty requiring urgent intervention, including the establishment of State Police to address the threats.
The leaders took the decision on Monday at an emergency joint meeting held at the Sir Kashim Ibrahim House in Kaduna.
The high-level parley, which convened the 19 governors, the traditional rulers led by the Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar, and security chiefs, was a definitive push to harmonise responses to the banditry and social decay bedevilling the region.
Addressing the forum, the Chairman of the NSGF and Governor of Gombe State, Inuwa Yahaya, painted a sobering picture of the current state of the North, saying the region is currently battling a “grim reality of insecurity and poverty” that threatens to destroy its social fabric.
Yahaya warned that history would not judge the current crop of leaders by the infrastructure they built, but by their ability to secure the region for the next generation.
He emphasised that the current wave of criminality “spares no one—poor or rich, Muslim or Christian,” and urged political actors to cease “partisan bickering” to save the region from collapse.
The northern governors insisted that the federal police structure is currently overwhelmed, saying the creation of State Police is a “critical and effective mechanism” needed to address the unique terrain and security challenges of the North.
They urged the National Assembly to expedite the necessary constitutional amendments to give states the power to secure their jurisdictions.
While acknowledging the need for military action, the governors admitted that deep-seated socio-economic failures fueling the crisis must be clearly addressed.
These, Governor Yahaya said, include underdevelopment, illiteracy, poor resource management, the hoardes of Almajiri and out-of-school children, and the adverse effects of climate change on the region’s agrarian economy.
The Forum called on traditional rulers to act as “stabilisers” in their communities and urged religious leaders to preach tolerance, warning against the use of incendiary rhetoric that inflame ethnic and religious tensions.
The Northern governors to work closely with the Federal Government to overcome the security and socio-economic challenges in the region.
