Politics

Give us Gurara State, Southern Kaduna leaders tell Tinubu

The Southern Kaduna Leadership Council (SKLC) has begged President Bola Tinubu to heed its call for Gurara State following the alleged sufferings and exclusion the people of the area passed through in the last eight years of the Nasir El-Rufai-led administration.

This was contained in a statement issued by the chairman of the council, Mr Ishaya Aku and made available to the Nigerian Tribune on Tuesday.

According to the statement, the Council held its regular meeting on the 17th of June, 2023, and considered several important matters, including the speech by Mal. Nasir El-Rufai, the immediate past governor of Kaduna, delivered to some religious clerics.

“That Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai set out deliberately to misinform the Nigerian Public and the world, and waged false propaganda amongst certain religious circles, to the effect that the people of Southern Kaduna who are mainly Christians did not vote for the APC.”

The statement further revealed that the voting figures cast in Federal, State and Local Government elections in Kaduna State between 2015 and 2023 bear testimony to the fact that Nasir El-Rufai deliberately deceived those in the APC who are not Muslims of his actions.

“The system of governance by exclusion practiced by El-Rufai was deliberate against the people of Southern Kaduna.

“That El-Rufai picked a Muslim deputy from Southern Kaduna to spite the Christian majority for not supporting the APC.

“The most insidious aspect of this El-Rufai agenda was his claim that he extended such a Muslim-Muslim system to the presidential election in order to extend the scope of “Islamic subjugation” across the length and breadth of Nigeria within twenty years.”

The statement noted that apart from impoverishing the people of the area as well as the deliberate destruction of their farmlands, crops, plantations, the wanton killings, burning of houses, maimings they suffered over the years among others are enough for them to look for redemption.

The leaders of the people of Southern Kaduna further expressed their displeasure over alleged marginalisation in the State despite paying taxes to government.

“We hereby wish to let the nation and international community know of the heinous plans and to draw the attention of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to the 2014 National Constitutional Conference where it was agreed to create Gurara State from the present Kaduna.

“We also wish to invite the President to activate the demand which has gone through the constitutional process of obtaining the consent of two-thirds of the 36 Houses of Assembly in the Federation.

“The nation and international community should know that the Southern Kaduna region was recorded to have above 3,000,000 people by 2006, and present projections show that there are now above six million people in the area,” the Southern Kaduna leaders said.

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