YOU are used to hearing of Northern Governors Forum, NGF. Now you are also hearing of Southern Governors Forum, SGF. Politicians are warming their engines for 2027, simple.
This intellectual orientation of the Northern establishment continued after the war in the guise of the Kaduna Mafia. Today, the pillars that made the North a formidable region are all but withered away. The Northern Governors Forum is still standing.
This sense of unity enabled a person like Nasir el-Rufai, whose parents were reportedly from Katsina, to contest and govern Kaduna State for eight years without anyone raising dust. Lagos State also provides a similar opportunity for all people of Yoruba stock, to the point where the original indigenes are now largely sidelined politically from the governance of their state.
Remove the South, and the North becomes just another Niger Republic or Chad; a landlocked Sahel enclave. However, under visionary leaders, the North can still thrive. They have the natural resources, especially arable land and solid minerals. But they will lose the freeloads that service the privileges of their idle aristocrats – control of our marine and oil resources, military and law enforcement forces. That is why they insist that Nigeria is “indivisible and indissoluble”.