Posted by By FEMI BABAFEMI on
Controversial Senator, Joseph Waku has described the ploy being employed by South-South delegates to secure a 25 per cent derivation from natural resources in their region as an attempt to blackmail the North.
Controversial Senator, Joseph Waku has described the ploy being employed by South-South delegates to secure a 25 per cent derivation from natural resources in their region as an attempt to blackmail the North.
Waku, who is the National Treasurer of Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and Wanpegha Ute Tivland, stressed that no amount of "blackmail could secure the South-South an unfair share of what belongs to the entire country."
He said instead of painting the North as the enemy of resource control, the South-South people should see other regions who have expressed reservations about their demand as partners in progress.
"North is not their enemy. If not for the North, South-East would have enslaved them during the civil war," the ACF chieftain stated while reacting to developments at the on going national confab.
"The South-South should work with others towards the unity of this nation and stop behaving as if without them, Nigeria cannot stand," Waku added.
He said it is wrong for the South-South to be using threats to blackmail the North to support a quest that could jeopardise the unity of Nigeria.
According to him, "no other region except the South-West can boast of contributing to the development of Nigeria more than the North. We contributed groundnut and pyramid while South-West contributed cocoa. Where was South-South then?"
He cautioned that "we should see every region as important to the nation. "He added that in as much as South-South only walked out of the conference and not out of the country," that shows we all want Nigeria as an umbrella for all regions.
He warned that spokespersons for the South-South should desist from issuing threats to other parts of the country as if they have the monopoly of threats.