#RevolutionNow: Northern Groups Accuse South West Leaders of Complicity in Plot to Overthrow Buhari, Want Political Alliance with Region Reviewed

A Coalition of Northern Groups (CNGs) has accused leaders from the South West Of complicity in the #RevolutionNow protests. 

The groups in a statement issued on Wednesday in Abuja by its spokesman, Abdul-Azeez Sulaiman said the silence of South West leaders showed involvement in what it described as a plot to topple the administration of president Muhammadu Buhari and called for the review of the political alliance the north had with south west leaders. 

They said, “It is quite unfortunate that the South West which has been the single major beneficiary of the Buhari administration should also be in the forefront of efforts to discredit and bring him down by all means. This can be seen in the manner in which the bulk of political, cultural, religious and traditional leadership is standing solidly against the government with its open support for call for the violent overthrow of the Buhari government by the #Revolutionow organizers.

“In particular, such individual beneficiaries of the government and others largely from the South West were nowhere to be seen when their people and the southern-based media ignited tensions over the government’s Ruga initiative.

“These same beneficiaries appear today in implicit support of the proposed insurrection by maintaining a conspiratorial neutrality while other southern influencers…explicitly backed the organizers”. 

Addressing Buhari, the group said, “We also wish to ask the president if in all honesty he still considers the South Western players as true friends who are genuinely desirous of his success. He should ask himself if the treatment he is receiving from them is worth the attention he had given the South West which involved colliding with his northern brethren to the point of elevating the status of June 12 as appeasement.

“To the entire northern leaders and elite, we categorically say that the current political alignment with the South West is not paying and it never will.”

The groups called on the northern elders and leaders “to review the region’s position by realigning with our traditional political friends which had served the whole nation for decades before the coming of this unholy and unprofitable union with the South Western block.

“This has become necessary with the way the South West is going about the current friendship by being more openly antagonistic to northern interests even while they are the major beneficiaries of the Buhari administration”.