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The Kaduna Central senatorial candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Shehu Sani, has said the Northern elite and masses are living in denial over the cause of insecurity in the region, preferring to blame outsiders rather than look inwards.
He stated this in a Facebook post on Tuesday, after Minister of Defence, Christopher Musa’s recent criticism of former Kaduna governor, Nasir El-Rufai for allegedly instigating crisis in Southern Kaduna while in office was greeted with disapproval by many Northerners.
Sani faulted Northerners for selectively blaming former President Goodluck Jonathan for insecurity while shielding and pampering former President Muhammadu Buhari, and now turning their criticism on President Bola Tinubu.
“If Christopher Musa had blamed GEJ and BAT for the killings, he would have been applauded. It’s said that Musa failed as a Defense chief, but all those revered as opposition messiahs were also once in office like Musa,” Sani said.
The former Kaduna Central senator argued that banditry originated in the North through criminal gangs and later spread across the country.
He added that Boko Haram terrorism also began in the North, extended to other parts of Nigeria, and affected neighbouring countries.
“The bandits and terrorists, many of whom are from our part of the country, have shed the blood of innocent people; they abducted children, raped women, extorted ransom, displaced millions and burned down the villages of our people.
“The orphans and widows generated by banditry and terrorism are now IDPs in our cities and refugees in our neighbouring countries,” he stated.
Sani noted that Chad, Cameroon and Niger continue to grapple with the insecurity that started from Northern Nigeria.
He maintained that Northerners blamed Jonathan, “skipped and pampered Buhari,” and are now blaming Tinubu for problems that leaders from the region failed to solve while in office.
The former Kaduna Central senator said, “We are asking for a miracle and magic we failed to perform. We don’t want to even hear that at a certain point in our tragic history, all the defence and security chiefs were from our part of the country; they met us with bandits and left us with more bandits.”
He argued that anger is directed at scapegoats rather than at bandits, terrorists, or Northern leaders who failed to address the crisis.
Sani said communities have endured violence for nearly two decades, yet there is reluctance to hold leaders from the region accountable for complicity.
Sani observed that people march over the graves of victims while protecting the image of leaders who failed them, likening the attitude to patients who reject laboratory results of their own illness.
“We are patients who want our diseases to be treated and cured, but we don’t want to accept and read the lab results; we want to write our own lab reports,” he said.
