CNG Leader Explains Difference Between The Igbo And Northerners

The spokesman of the Coalition for Northern Groups, Abdulazeez Suleiman, Tuesday, blamed leaders from the North for the poverty and lack of education in the region.

Suleiman made an analogy between the human development of people of the old Eastern region and their northern counterparts, and attributed the downswing of the latter to northern leaders’ selfishness.

He told our correspondent that, “Yesterday, the itinerant tailors who peddled their trade with mobile sewing machines perched on their shoulders were almost entirely persons from Eastern Nigeria.

“Today, almost one hundred percent of the itinerant tailors are from Northern Nigeria. It is a metaphor of social mobility of two people in diametrically opposed directions. While the Northern elite were grabbing political power with single-minded focus, the Igbo ensured that every child either acquired education and thus becomes ‘employable’, or learnt a trade and became self-employed.

“The result is that in half a generation, the people of Eastern Nigeria exited low paying menial tasks for higher paying employment, thus lifting thousands out of poverty. Western Nigeria has a similar socio-economic structure that emphasizes education and entrepreneurship.

“Northern elite failed to observe that political power and office alone serves only their selfish interest, and as such, grossly inadequate to lift the people of Northern Nigeria out of poverty and set them on the path of economic prosperity.”