Bashir Dalhatu, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), has accused President Bola Tinubu of turning his back on the North despite the overwhelming support he received from the region during the 2023 elections.
Speaking in Kaduna at a two-day interactive session organised by the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation, Dalhatu said, “President Tinubu has neglected and sidelined Northern Nigeria.”
The event, which focused on reviewing Tinubu’s campaign promises to the North, was themed “Assessing Electoral Promises: Fostering Government-Citizens Engagement for National Unity.”
Dalhatu reminded participants that in October 2022, Tinubu was among the presidential candidates who attended a similar session in Kaduna, where he made specific pledges to the region.
“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,” Dalhatu 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.”
According to him, the North gave Tinubu over five million votes, expecting that the region’s longstanding challenges would be addressed. Instead, Dalhatu said, “President Tinubu’s budget priorities, his infrastructural projects, his appointments, and other executive actions have, over the last two years, largely sidelined Northern Nigeria.”
“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,” he added. “Whether or not they are succeeding, we do not know. But we cannot pretend not to observe that the federal government’s budget priorities, infrastructural projects, investments, and even social services have been openly skewed against Northern Nigeria.”
Dalhatu accused the president of failing to act on the core issues that were presented to him, including insecurity, which he described as the most urgent threat facing the North.
“Over the last decade, widespread violence, characterised by massacres, bombings, cattle rustling, kidnapping, and other manifestations of conflict and insecurity, has swept across Northern Nigeria, crippling almost all productive economic activities and social progress,” he said. “Even as we speak, this crisis shows no signs of abating. The insurgent groups continue to multiply, their attacks becoming more deadly.”
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