Southern Alliance Forum hits back at NEF over ultimatum to Jonathan •Wants Northern elders to apologise over past misdeeds.#Politics SOUTHERN Alliance Forum (SAF), on Sunday, accused the Northern Elders’ Forum (NEF) of hypocrisy over the ultimatum it issued to President Goodluck Jonathan to rescue kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls and put an end to the Boko Haram insurgency, saying terrorism arose as a result of the failure of the Northern elders. NEF had issued an October deadline to the president to meet the demand or forget his 2015 presidential ambition. However, in its response, SAF said in a statement signed by its chairman, Dr Bassey Etim and the secretary, DrTony Mosunmade and made available to the media in Abuja, on Sunday, that NEF’s demand on Jonathan is “a travesty of judgement at best.” The Southern group observed that NEF was pointing accusing fingers on everyone except themselves over the insurgency, thereby “sounding and behaving like spoilt elders and inadequate fathers; fathers, who deliberately brought fire into their own homes and instead of deliberating on how to put out the fire, concentrated on blaming others so as to save face.” The statement added: “But their skirt is showing, it is right out in the open, there is no more face to save. The challenges of the North started because the elders did not give a damn. They presided over the marginalization of millions of lives for over 50 years, while they lived in squalor opulence, the bounty of oil mismanagement and to the demise of national sanity.” While noting that President Jonathan is not responsible for the Boko Haram, SAF observed that the Northern elders “choose to hide their heads in the ground pretending that they did not know who was responsible for Yusuf’s (former Boko Haram leader) demise. Our police is blameless; they only did what was demanded of them. “Now we have a huge problem, the Sheep has grown iron claws and there is no more rest for the wolves and the neighbourhood. Even the little female sheep is wearing spiked garter belts and they have become harbingers of death, sign of terrible times to come.” The Southern group asserted that Jonathan had shown great determination in combating the horror of the Boko Haram insurgency, while the Northern leaders had all along been fighting the president. It added: “It is good that the NEF have now come to the sensible conclusion that the situation will not resolve on its own. What is intolerable is that they will be hypocritical enough to point fingers at the president, an Ijaw man, a group that bore as much as any other group, the cost of the privilege of our Northern elders to make Dubai their permanent abode. “All the people, who are responsible for the security and justice apparatus of the state are northerners, yet they still blame the president.” “When Boko Haram first struck and the Southerners bled, the Northern elders silence was noticeably deafening. The NEF latest demand is the worst kind of hypocrisy. “Have they suddenly developed compassion for a region they malignly neglected? Or are they now fearing the results of their past misdeeds? Or do they just want to rule Nigeria because they are entitled?” SAF asked. The Southern group said the Northerner leaders must summon the courage to tender a public apology “for all the past misdeeds or neglect that have led to their own children taking up arms against them,” saying that “this apology properly tendered in good faith, will appease some of the combatants and may be persuaded some to lay down their arms. It may even allow the rest of the country to develop a new respect for our Northern elders. “The ills of the North are the result of Northern elders’ past actions or inactions. That the rest of the nation is culpable is only because the Southern leaders did not speak out loudly enough against the misrule of the North. Now, the chicken has come home to roost and we are all paying the price. “But there must never be a misunderstanding about whose fault this is and who is responsible. What one expect from the NEF in their next meeting is for them all to seat out in sackcloth, with ashes over their heads and horsewhip in their hands crying repeatedly Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa. “Maybe then God Almighty will listen to all our prayers and return wisdom to our elders and in his mercy show them a way out of the mess we all know they have created,” SAF maintained.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 11:22:21 +0000
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