The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) on Sunday said the North can no longer continue to coexist with people of Igbo extraction in Nigeria.



CNG said the assassination of Ahmed Gulak, a former aide to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan in Imo State, was an indication that the North can no longer coexist with southeasterners in Nigeria.

Spokesman of CNG, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, said Gulak’s assassination is a wider plan by the people of Igbo extraction to replicate the ugly events of 1966.

In a statement by Suleiman, CNG claimed that people of the Southeast are funding “gangs” like the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and Eastern Security Network (ESN) to cause havoc.

CNG said it is no longer in doubt that the “violent rascality by the IPOB, the ESN and other assortments of armed Igbo gangs is funded, fully supported and emboldened by every component of the Igbo society at home and in the Diaspora.”

It added that: “The CNG considers it an insult to our collective sensibilities and ordinary rules of decency to expect other parts of the country, particularly the North, to continue to coexist as one country with the Igbo as federating partners.

“The coordinated incessant attacks on police formations in Imo, Ebonyi, Aba, Ibadan, Enugu, Anambra and most recently the police headquarters in Kwara and Sunday’s cold blooded assassination of Ahmed Gulak, a prominent northern leader, are part of a wider plan by the Igbo to replicate the ugly events of 1966 and the more reason why we cannot be reasonably expected to live with them as a nation any longer.”

Suleiman also reiterated its rejection of the just concluded public hearing on constitution review organized by the Senate, stressing that it came at the wrong time and with the wrong motive.

He said the constitution review was just another exercise in futility with the sole motive of diverting the huge public funds allocated for it as with all previous attempts.

“It is equally insensitive for the Senate to come up with such dubious exercise at a time the whole of the northern region is literally abandoned at the mercy of a rampaging insurgency and sundry security issues designed to continuously weaken the region politically and pauperize it economically,” he said.