Northern Nigeria’s over dependence on South oil is Very dangerous, says Shehu Sani

A northern-based human rights activist, Malam Shehu Sani, on Sunday said the North might face disaster if it continued to depend on the proceeds from  petroleum for its economic survival.

Sani, a Kaduna Central Senatorial aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress in the 2015 poll, who  lamented that the northern states government could not boast of paying salaries of workers except with the proceeds from the monthly federal allocation, said 2015 should be a year for change in the region.

The activist was addressing Railway Pensioners of the Nigerian Railway  Corporation at the Kaduna Railway Junction, in Kaduna State on Sunday.

This is just as the apex body of youths in the North, Arewa Youth Forum, made case for the election of credible youth into elective position in the 2015 general elections, noting that the present crop of northern  leaders had failed the people of the region.

Saying that the over-dependence of the North on oil proceeds would spell doom for the region, Sani, who is also the President of the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria, insisted that commoners in the region would continue to wallow  in perpetual slavery if they failed to  resist money politics and vote credible leaders to  leadership positions in the North.

He added that for things to work well in the North, the poor must rise up to resist corrupt leaders and ensure the emergence of responsible leaders in the North and by extension, the entire country.

He said, “Time has passed when that Northern States will continue to survive on Niger Delta’s oil money; our states are bereft of any idea that will generate revenue to run our affairs. There is no single state in the North that can pay one month salaries without federal.

“And federal allocation is derived from sale of Niger Delta oil, and so this is dangerous and disaster in the future. It is possible for someone to be feeding you without controlling you? Our visionary leaders like Sir Ahmadu Bello foresaw all these dangers, yet our leaders betrayed the course of common good. If today Nigeria is split, the North is in danger.

“We must resist money politics and ensure that only credible people are elected, we must protect our votes. We are only number one in population. We have highest number of senators, governors, local governments, councilors but have highest numbers of beggars and oppressed citizens.”

In his response, leader of the pensioners, Mohammed Muntaka-Aliyu, said their pension was a paltry N 5,000, but vowed that they would resist any attempt to  monetise politics in view of its negative implications.

Meanwhile, the AYF leadership, led by its national president, Gambo Gujungu, at a press conference on Sunday in Kaduna, said competent and credible  youths should be elected Northern leaders in 2015