socio-political group, Arewa New Agenda (ANA), has emerged with a focus on repositioning the northern region as a dominant force in Nigeria.
ANA, on Thursday in Yola, the Adamawa state capital, declared its opposing stance on the rotational presidency, alluding to President Bola Tinubu’s “it is my turn” comment before the 2023 election.
Addressing journalists on the new move, the president of the group, Senator Ahmad Abubakar Moallayidi alleged that Northern Nigeria was short-changed by the Tinubu administration, despite its numerical strength to determine the political direction and the leadership of the country.
According to him, President Tinubu had abandoned the North, which gave him the bulk of the ballots that brought him to power.
He also lamented that despite its rich endowment with both human and natural resources, the region has been plagued with the multiple challenges of poverty, illiteracy and insecurity.
Moallayidi boasted that ANA’s goal is to right the wrongs of the past by mobilising the younger generation of northerners, in particular, to confront the region’s myriad of challenges.
He said, “Everybody knows that here in northern Nigeria we have a lot of problems. So our focus, even before the election was that what is in it for northern Nigeria?
“Of course, when the APC was formed everybody endorsed General Muhammadu Buhari from the North. The other part of the country, especially the southwest, which came to form the alliance, asked for a lot of things which were granted; one of which was power shift to the south.
“Now that the power is there, what is in it for the North? This is what I and my colleagues have been asking but we could not get an answer. So we decided we shouldn’t just sit back to continue in a turn-by-turn presidential system.
“Turn-by-turn doesn’t make sense! Turn-by-turn is not democracy, you know that; you’re just shifting the mantle of leadership, not that you’re doing democracy. And you also know that whatever form of government you have, you know that people must have dividends of that form of government.
“This is what Arewa New Agenda is trying to project; that in this government now what is in it for us in the North? But we were not given an answer! Of course, you know that the bulk of what forms any government in Nigeria, not just the APC, 70 per cent of it is from the North.”
Moallayidi further averred that the ANA was poised to reposition the North to redefine its status as a dominant player in the country.
“We have to take our own destiny in our own hands; we’ll not go begging. We’ll harness agricultural potentials, livestock and other natural resources found deposited in all the states of the North,” he added.
ANA was formed by notable northerners, consisting of the political elite and technocrats in the ranks of the former Head of Service of the Federation, Yayale Ahmed, Senator Jonathan Silas Zwingina, among others.