We’re Committed To Referendum To Separate S’East To Avert Another War In Nigeria – Abdulazeez Suleiman

The Coalition for Northern Groups (CNG) is in court to explore a referendum to determine if the Southeast should remain a part of Nigeria in accordance with the African Charter. In this interview with Chinedu Aroh, CNG’s spokesman, Abdulazeez Suleiman, sheds more light on the agenda of his group.

Is the objective of your group in going to court in the interest of Nigeria’s unity?

It is the most patriotic, civilised, civic, and necessary step ever taken to achieve the unity of Nigeria and put to rest the growing agitations for secession, especially by the Southeast which has lingered for about sixty years now. It will provide the legal framework for the resolution of the violence associated with disturbances created by certain interest groups in the Southeast in the form of the agitation for a separate State of Biafra. We at CNG have taken stock of events unfolding in Nigeria since 2016, with the embers of this agitation ignited by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and other authors of mindless violence and separatism who see it as their duty to actualise what their fathers started in 1966 through terrorist tactics.

The CNG has studied these events carefully and with considerable restraints and maturity to the point of condoning and accommodating several unreasonable and unacceptable actions that have been perpetrated against Nigerians collectively, and northerners in particular. We all know that of late, matters have reached a point whereby silence has become complicity, and inaction is no longer an option. Unprovoked evictions, attacks and killings of northerners in various parts of the South have resulted from the hate campaigns and propaganda being conducted by regional and ethnic agitators aimed mainly at instigating reprisals by northerners against people from other parts of the country.

We are as well aware that the perpetrators of violence relentlessly pursuing this agenda of destruction and collective mayhem hope it will engulf the entire country and bring about another civil war. We took the necessary step of writing to alert all northern Emirs and chiefs of the unfolding scenario which were pregnant with unforeseen circumstances.

Similar representations were made to the leadership of the National Assembly in which we demanded the immediate suspension of the ongoing exercise for the review of the 1999 Constitution and concentrate on determining who and what actually constitutes Nigeria in which the Igbo, by taking up arms against the Nigerian state, have foreclosed every hope for the rest of us to continue coexisting with them as one nation.

We demanded the NASS to organize a referendum by seeking the cover of the same Doctrine of Necessity invoked by Nigeria’s federal parliament that paved way for former President Goodluck Jonathan’s takeover by declaring the late President Umaru Musa Yaradua unfit. We demanded NASS to prevail on the federal government of Nigeria to invite the United Nations as well as the African Union and ECOWAS to initiate the process of self-determination to mandate the Biafrans out of the Nigerian union by leveraging on the several relevant international treaties and conventions to which Nigeria is a signatory.

After taking these major steps, we are now in court seeking legal interpretations of relevant constitutional provisions and international conventions and treaties to which Nigeria is a signatory.

Agitators claim they are marginalized in the Nigerian polity. Wouldn’t your group also advocate equity in the nation’s political equation?

All those are part of the lies promoted by the secessionist groups in the South to rewrite history to make the North appear as the guilty entity. The North has continued to bear the brunt of the violent agitations for secession and other commotions around restructuring with equanimity, stoical calm and resignation.
In spite of this studied and dignified reserve of the North and refusal by its people to engage in altercations with these self-appointed enemies of Nigeria and antagonists of the North, no stone is being left unturned by these people to see that the North is goaded into reacting.

Yet the North remains the bulwark of decorum, civilization, accommodation and all other positive traits. Having failed to achieve their nefarious objectives through propaganda, long-practised tactics are now being played out in the form of attacks against northerners and against agents and symbols of the Federal Government of Nigeria in the Southeast and parts of the Southsouth.

The mindless violence and diabolical scheme exhibited in the actions and clamours of IPOB, supported morally and politically by the vast majority of the pliant and affrighted Igbo elites, has pushed Nigeria to the precipice. We are convinced that this renewed violent determination of the Igbo to see through the secession of the Southeast from Nigeria is now real and cannot be avoided or deferred any longer. To avoid such mishaps and unnecessary devastation on all sides, particularly the Southeast whose leaders and agitators are now bent on driving it over the brink into a catastrophe, we are of the view that resort to available means of actualising the separation of the Southeast from the rest of Nigeria is today a vital task that must be undertaken by all.

How will your group’s suit vis-a-vis the African Charter define Nigeria’s federalism?

In order to prevent a descent into another civil war and mass killings, we at the CNG have committed to the call for a referendum that will finally separate the Southeast from Nigeria. We are hoping that the court with compel the NASS to come up with a framework to be agreed upon in the course of the referendum and its final implementation in the Southeast or any enclave that wishes to secede from Nigeria.

All identified indigenes (Igbos) of the enclave or entity that called for secession (Southeast) must leave the territory of Nigeria and assemble in their designated enclave for the purpose of the exercise. The outcome of the referendum shall be final, irreversible and shall not be reviewed or reconsidered for any other reasons. Citizens of the break-away enclave shall be deprived of any automatic rights to return to the territory of the rump Nigeria, or to be admitted to live in any of its parts.