The Katsina
Elders’ Forum has urged President Bola Tinubu to, as a matter of urgency,
countermand the plan to relocate the refurbished airport rescue and
firefighting vehicles project of the Umaru Musa Yar’Adua International Airport,
Katsina, to the south or risk 2027.
The forum, which is an umbrella body of Katsina
State senior citizens, also warned the president against relocating certain
departments of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Federal Airports
Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to the Southern part of the country.
The Secretary of the forum, Aliyu Mohammed, who
briefed journalists in Katsina on Wednesday evening on its resolutions after a
closed-door meeting, said the relocation move was a premeditated attempt to
cripple the socio-economic activities of Northern Nigeria.
He said the contractor of the refurbished airport
rescue and firefighting vehicles project of the Umaru Musa Yar’Adua
International Airport wrote to the Minister of Aviation, Mr. Festus Keyamo,
demanding its relocation for flimsy reasons.
He explained that President Tinubu was being
ill-advised by those he termed enemies of Nigeria who does not want the unity
of the country to relocate the Katsina airport project, CBN departments and
FAAN to the Southern part of the country.
Mohammed said: “Therefore, we are warning Mr. Bola
Ahmed Tinubu, as long as he is interested in coming back in 2027, as long as he
is interested in the votes of the Northerners, to reverse these
unconstitutional decisions. Whoever is advising him to take such decisions is
an enemy of the country.
“Such a person is not interested in the Nigeria project. And the North is
not afraid of telling Tinubu to his face that we are not ready to re-elect him
in 2027 once he starts moving all these critical departments to Lagos.”
He, however, accused the Minister of the Federal
Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, of deploying all tactics to infiltrate Abuja
with kidnappers to fine-tune the federal government plan of relocating such
projects.
According to him, “The FCT Minister is inviting
the Israelis to come and provide security to Abuja. We have never known
anything like kidnapping in Abuja until Wike came into Abuja as a minister.”
The secretary of the forum called on President
Tinubu to focus on tackling the myriad of security challenges besetting the
North rather than relocating economic-boosting projects from the region to
other parts of the country.
“Despite the insecurity situation in the North,
Tinubu is not making any effort to curb the insecurity and is moving all these
departments”, he added.
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