Sani, who spoke on Arise News monitored in Abuja, also touched on the essence of the recent public engagement by the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation in Kaduna and revealed how he has been able to foster peace in the state.
Essence of the 2-day public engagement
What happened in Kaduna a few days ago was what some of us have been calling for since many years.
Recall that the Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation had a meeting (maybe many people might not have known that, about six months ago here in Abuja and some of us who attended the meeting came out openly and criticised the organisation as well as other northern organisations.
The meeting we had a few days ago was a follow-up to the one we did in Abuja six months ago. I was telling them, let us come together. We have a common problem and we must have a common solution to the problem. But what I don’t like, I said at that meeting, was that we cannot be sitting blaming everyone.
But we always take blame all the time to people who are not from our zone. Particularly, I made it clear there, that we cannot sit there and be blaming the current administration of President Bola Tinubu. Let me repeat it here today. I will continue to say that if we want to correct this problem, we must take the blame.
Claims of Northern marginalisation
Can we look at the developmental indices one by one? When you talk of marginalisation, don’t just say marginalisation.
Number one, here in this country, the Minister of Agriculture is from where? Northern Nigeria. The Minister of State for Agriculture is from Northern Nigeria.
Let me give you an example of Kaduna, where I come from. When I came in as governor, the budget to Agriculture was about N1.4 billion. And remember the Malabo Declaration in 2014 was that if we want to really transform Agriculture, no sub-national or national government should budget less than 10% for Agriculture. Today in Kaduna, our budget is about 12% in Agriculture. So that is number one. The reason why we can do this easily is that both the Minister of State and the Minister of Agriculture are from Borno State, and one is from Niger State. They are from northern Nigeria.