The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), has insisted that President Bola Tinubu has been sidelining and neglecting the North ignoring the massive support the region gave him to become president.
The Chairman of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the ACF, Alhaji Bashir Dalhatu, outlined the region’s grievances against Tinubu on Tuesday during a government-citizen engagement organised by the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation (SABMF) to review Tinubu’s electoral promises to the north.
The theme of the event was “Assessing electoral promises: Fostering government-citizens engagement for national unity”.
“In that meeting, we presented to Asiwaju Bola Tinubu a written address containing details of the issues of urgent concern to the people of Northern Nigeria,” he said.
“In turn, he gave us his own written document containing details of the issues he believed were of concern to the north and how he intended to address them.”
“Two years into the four-year tenure of President Tinubu, the feeling among the people of the north is, to put it mildly, completely mixed,” he said.
“To our surprise, those who did not support him, did not vote, and hardly wished him well have emerged from nowhere and are trying to push a wedge between him and the north.
“Whether or not they are succeeding, we do not know. But we cannot pretend not to observe that President Tinubu’s budget priorities, his infrastructural projects, his appointments, and other executive actions have, over the last two years, largely sidelined northern Nigeria.
“The federal government’s budget priorities, infrastructural projects, investments, and even social services have been openly skewed against Northern Nigeria.”
He accused the president of allegedly doing little or nothing to address the major issues of concern to the north.
“Even as we speak, this crisis shows no signs of abating. The insurgent groups continue to multiply, their attacks becoming more deadly,” he added.
