2023: Northern Elders Tell Fashola To Resign Or Be Sacked

A member of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), Alhaji Rufai Mukhtar Danmaje has called on Babatunde Fashola to resign as the Minister of Works and Housing or be sacked by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Danmaje alleged that the Minister has not completed any project in the Northern region since he was appointed Minister five years ago.

He also noted that Fashola is not in a position to call on the All Progressives Congress (APC) to respect the zoning formula in 2023 as he hasn’t carried out his duties effectively as a Minister and may be blocking the chance of his region to produce the next President due to his own incapabilities.

Citing the example of the Mambila Hydro Power Project, Danmaje submitted that despite the huge resources been allocated to his Ministry, Fashola has not completed a single project since 2015 when he was appointed.

He said: “For example look at the issue of Mambila Hydro Power project. Over time the Minister has been deceiving the President and indeed Nigerians that works have reached high percentage but only for a committee to now expose that there is nothing on ground there”.

“If people like Fashola continue to talk about rotational Presidency back to the South, they might provoke us to reject voting for anybody from that region because we consider him a failure and nothing more.

“You could see that no single road project is been completed under Fashola in the entire Northern Nigeria even the darling Kano, Kaduna, Abuja road he is saying can’t be completed till after their tenure, so what are we saying?”

Danmaje who is believed to have expressed the views on behalf of the Northern Elders Forum also commented on the rising spates of insecurity in the Northern region.

According to him, “we fall into the trap of insecurity for many reasons, one of which was because of lack of leadership in the region and indeed lack of tentative roadmap for its survival and indeed negligence of the traditional institution which earlier on were our mirrors.”

Meanwhile, the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Saad Abubakar has described the Northern region of Nigeria as the worst place to live currently.

He lamented during a meeting of the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council (NIREC) that bandits and other criminals now roam the region freely, the people are no longer safe and cost of living keeps increasing every day.