ACF Chairman Coomassie Blasts State Govs For Being Anti-people
BY AMOS TAUNA, KADUNA – The Chairman of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), and former Inspector General of Police, Alhaji Ibrahim A. Coomassie, on Monday accused state governors of pursuing anti-people policies that have left the people impoverished and hopeless.
Speaking in Kaduna when he chaired the 2018 lectures of Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation, the former nation’s top cop, said governors are busy building multi-billion naira airports, government houses and other white elephant projects, while their people live in wanton poverty and squalor.
Present political office holders in the country, according to the ACF Chairman, pay scant attention to the needs of their populace, adding that corrupt practices have become endemic with the desire to provide social amenities to the people relegated to the background by public office holders.
Describing the unemployment crisis as a time bomb that needs to be addressed, Coomassie noted that, “This deplorable situation has made them vulnerable as tools of the political class to use to foment political violence or foot soldiers of ethnic or religious bigots and extremists to destroy the peace and serenity the north has been known for.”
Speaking on this year’s conference with the theme: ‘The North and the challenge of leadership”, Coomasie called on the North to seek for a way out of the present political mess that the region has found itself. He cautioned both the Federal and state governments to urgently evolve ways of bringing an end the incessant clashes between herdsmen and farmers to avoid loss of lives and destruction of properties.
Expressing apprehension over the clashes that have assumed a most destabilizing dimension, Coomasie lamented that if the crises are not properly managed; it could plunge the nation, especially the North, into unprecedented internecine conflicts. He lamented that thousands of lives and property are continually being lost to herdsmen and farmers’ clashes.
He drew the attention of the conference to the roadmap of the Arewa Consultative Forum evolved by experts in various human fields that was submitted to Northern governors in order to achieve harmony, peace and progress.
Keynote speaker of the event, Professor Alkasum Abba of the Department of History, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, said the North was left behind other states of the country due to the inability of Northerners to talk to each other on the way forward.
He noted that the region’s founding fathers were outstanding in improving the living standards of the people, pointing out that the new breed politicians lack transparency, integrity and wisdom to carry the people along in all spheres of life.
This year’s event that had always attracted former Heads of State was poorly attended.
