From Sola Ojo, Kaduna
The Coalition of Northern Activists for Peace (CNAP), yesterday, said the north is healing and not bleeding as feared by some persons within and outside the region.
They said the Federal Government under President Muhammadu Buhari was doing well in tackling the security challenges in the country.
Convener of the group in Kaduna State, Zubairu Mukhtar, at a press conference after a solidarity walk, said the security situation in the north, especially in Kaduna, was not as bad as was painted.
The solidarity walk titled: “The North, Our North, Our Kaduna” was to appreciate the efforts of President Buhari’s and security agencies in addressing insecurity in the north.
Mukhtar said the north over time has been on the spotlight with issues of insecurity, specifically banditry, terrorism and cyber propaganda.
He said the last 12 years have been most challenging, especially with the havoc caused by the activities of Boko Haram and other militant organisations in Borno, Yobe, Katsina, Bauchi, Plateau and Kaduna states.
“It is indeed a statement of fact that the actions of these criminal elements brought sorrow, tears and blood in a most barbaric and condemnable manner. As concerned stakeholders in northern Nigeria and Kaduna State, we cannot feign ignorance to the issues affecting our state and the region, which by all indications are politically motivated. This is incognizant that successive governments attempted to address the issues. However, their best wasn’t good enough, so much so that we feared that Armageddon had come,” he said.
Mukhtar lauded the Buhari-led government for taking the right steps in addressing the issues in northern Nigeria amid the conspiracies against it.
He commended the police, DSS, army and airforce for bringing professionalism to bear in a demonstration that the president appointed the right people to get the job done.
“Let us make no mistakes, the Muhammadu Buhari administration has set Nigeria on the path of greatness. Gone are those days where we feared for the worse. Gone are those days where local government areas in northern Nigeria and our dear state Kaduna were under the control of non-state actors. And gone are those days where our security agencies could not defend the territorial integrity of our dear country.
“We are indeed on the right track. We enormously thank President Muhammadu Buhari for his sound leadership that has brought us out of darkness and into the light. The various indices in northern Nigeria point in the right direction. It behoves on all well-meaning Nigerians to join forces towards ensuring that the peace-building process is not truncated for whatever reason.”