Opinion: The Rough Games Arewa Bourgeoisies Play With The Talakawas

By Tony Erha
Few days ago, the Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, an apex body that claims to represent the Northern region of Nigeria, also called Arewa, made categorical press statements. This is not the first time they made generic statements, presumed to be in the interest of the region. Oftentimes, desperate and divisive statements emanate from groups and individuals, who assume the role of official mouthpieces for the general wellbeing of the northerners, especially the poor.
But, reversely, it is more to feathering the nests of a privileged minority and established monolithic control, than the commoners who constitute the majority.
Were they supposed to cause vehemence and fears as a weapon to whip others in the polity, into gulping the poisoned chalice that they evidently loathe? Alas, of the country, it is those without the buttocks that are provided with seats, while those with the bottom are deprived of seats.
There is an anointed clique that is engrained with full sight, and others as purblind enough to not know or be forced to ignore the ‘cheating game’. But a blind man without the benefit of sight would begin to notice when his soup is laden with dirt.
This is Nigeria’s newest stark reality that should bother everyone more than the insurgency that informed the gathering of ACF.
Although ACF and its crowded supporters lucidly portrayed their positions, in tangible expressions, which hinge on their theme – unrestrained insecurity, the last wish of its eradication by concerned Nigerians, ACF went ahead asking the federal government a farfetched question, “if Nigeria was in a war?”, judging from the upsurge of the insurgency that had besieged the nation, with unspeakable high death tolls and destruction.
For a region and most of its elites, who have lived with the internecine insurgency, heavy deaths and devastation, with most accusing fingers pointing at them as the cause and aggravators, they are ideally in the best and first of place to be asked “if the country was in a full-scale war with the insurgents, and not the government.
Further warning surfaced at the Forum’s 38th Board meeting, held in Abuja, chaired by Bashir Dalhatu, who is on its trustee board. The group further said it was disturbed by “the scale and persistence of violence across the country, as a national emergency threatening Nigeria’s stability and the future”.
Indeed, Nigeria has been shattered, particularly the North, which is a butt of deadly attacks by terrorists, jihadists, armed herdsmen, and other criminal elements, that kill, maim, rob, kidnap for ransoms, caused suicide-bombing, arsons and sacking of villages, without restraints. Where arms supplied by foreign illegal miners fuel the brazen attacks, ACF’s North also experiences much of illegal mining, with sophisticated weapons.
Let’s glimpse at the unending lists of the Northern heavyweights that attended the meeting, narrowing it to a few.
ADVERTISEMENT
Mahmud Yayale Ahmed is a former top civil servant and politician, who was Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Minister of Defence in 2007, under the late presidents Umaru Yar’ Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, respectively. He later served as Secretary to the Government of the Federation, in the era when Boko Haram, then a ragtag insurgent group was sprouted in the north-east fringes of the country. This is the same group that was purportedly encouraged by the same ACF’s North and its elite, to magnify into untamed monsters that they are today.

Why should the ones who sowed the weeds be scared of the thorns?

Bashir Dalhatu, who read the meeting’s communique, is an aristocrat, lawyer and politician, who had served the Interim National Government as Minister of Transport and Aviation. He returned as a Minister of Power and Steel in the Sani Abacha’s government, and again as Minister of Internal Affairs.
Mohammed D. Abubakar was a former Inspector General of the Police from 2012 to 2014, who was a prominent security czar that should’ve decimated the Boko Haram. Muhammad-Bande, a seasoned diplomat, academic and political scientist, was president of the United Nations General Assembly 74th Session from 17 September 2019 to 15 September 2020. He served as Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations for seven long years.
Recently, Tukur Yusufu Buratai stoutly defended the country’s Air Force, on the widespread allegations of the bombing of innocent civilians, thus insisting that those bombed were actually insurgents and their accomplices. Fifty to one hundred vulnerable market women and children were reportedly killed and others maimed at Jilli Market, located between Gubio and Geidam Local Government Areas of Borno and Yobe states, citing a case of human rights violations. Buratai, a retired Lt. General of the Nigerian Army, was Chief of Army Staff, COAS, and later served as envoy to the Republic of Benin. The government of President Muhammadu Buhari, in which he served, is widely accused of having aided and abetted the insurgents.
It is therefore, pertinent to ask whatever efforts this galaxy of Northern Nigerians, have wielded to stop the emergence and explosion of numerous insurgent groups, when they were in power? Also desirable is what they have done as ACF elites to stamp out the insurgency?
Now that they are out of power, but in a commanding peak of consulting for the entire region, what manner of consultation do they evolve therein, that can’t call the rebellious groups and their sponsors, majority of who are their Northern brothers, to lay down their arms, in the interest of peace and progress?
Without mincing words, the northern high-class, instead of blaming government and others over Arewa’s woes and back drifts, should have themselves to blame for inflicting pains on the region.
If such comments by outsiders may be seen as unfair, not the same thing coming from David Mark, a prominent northerner, who was had served as a Minister and some other high national position, as the longest-serving Senate President. In a no-holds-bare interview with the Punch newspaper of
July 26, 2025, the disputable National Chairman of the African Democracy Congress, ADC, asserted thus;
“The North as we know is a land of rich history and mineral resources, fertile land for agriculture, diverse cultures, and immense potential. In spite of these blessings, we are confronted with deep-seated challenges of insecurity, poverty, ethnic and religious tensions, political fragmentation, social and economic stagnation. These challenges did not develop overnight nor will they disappear until we resolve to take deliberate, collective and decisive action”
“We must first admit that we are the architects of our problems, we must stop the blame game if we truly and genuinely want to find a lasting solution”
Pointblank, the ACF statement, confronting the federal government, when they are much aware of the missing links, and can’t volunteer a synergy to bail the country out of the circle of killings and maiming, is ugly and laughable. It tends to expose a wide void in ACF’s relational strategies, segmented cohesion and capable leadership. It also apparently signals distant leadership or social disconnect, from the strata of a region that was once known as a bastion of peace and diverse human existence.
Like Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) and Abdulsalim Abubakar, former heads of state, and their Niger State of origin, what are the northern leaders, like the aforementioned of ACF, doing to roll back the insurgency that has devastated their local communities and their Arewa?
Charity must begin at home. The ACF, other frontal groups and vocal individuals must get their home in order, before earning respect from outsiders.