By Abdu Labaran Malumfashi.
24-12-2025.
DESPITE the WARNING that the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF),should NOT needlessly disgrace itself by launching an appeal fund, ostensibly to raise the level of education, health and other sectors in the North, it went ahead to do so. And the sum of N100 billion was said to have been raised at the launching.
I share the feeling that there must NOT be an appeal for funds before Northerners could come to the rescue of some important sectors in their region.
PEOPLE are against the launching because most of what is realised will end up in the private accounts of the ranking members of the Northern socio/cultural organisation by way of CORRUPTION, and the big ‘donors’ at the occasion, as they would be the CONTRACTORS who will execute the said ‘projects’.
AS the utility and importance of the socio/cultural organisation to the progress and development of the NORTH is DEBATABLE, some people expressed reservations about the ACF.
AN unnamed person, who shared his views about the 30th anniversary of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), observed that the organisation was celebrating “VANITY & AFFLUENCE”.
ACCORDING to him, members of the Association of Comfortable Families (ACF), “are not elected, not appointed nor representing anybody. They are a group of people who formed a pressure & lobby group ( ACF) for the purpose of remaining relevant having exhausted all their opportunities in public service & having become accustomed to living at the expense of local, state and federal governments.
“They are those very lucky members of the North who were educated free with groundnuts, maize, cotton, millet, maize pyramids and hydes and skins, cultivated and tendered by the villagers.
“They attended various educational & professional trainings locally, but mostly abroad at public expense, which enhanced their skills & opened numerous windows of opportunities for them.
“They were enrolled into public & various security services on a platter of Gold on behalf of the North. Some of them held the highest offices that were never part of their dreams because they came from the down trodden families of peasant farmers. They wielded enormous power and influence over the last 50 to 60 years.
“Sadly over 80% of them planned only for themselves & their immediate family members forgetting their humble beginnings and back grounds.
“Rather than reciprocating the gesture that made them what they are, they opted to ride on the back of the North, amassed so much power & wealth thereby contributing in destroying the same North they are supposed to protect.
“Before their very eyes, indeed with their active participation , greed and cowardice the North was destroyed, decimated and factionalized along ethnic, tribal and religious divides. Such that mutual suspicion, hate and open dislike is what dominates the Entire Northern region.
“When most of the members of the ACF are in the midst of fellow Northerners, they complain about every government, abuse its leadership and wish them dead. But when speaking in public, they praise the political leaders in power, they “stand on their mandates” and call them all the good names.
THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NORTH: 90% of them have no single physical, tangible, visible & measurable investment in the North. Most of their investments are in Lagos, Abuja, Saudi Arabia, Cairo, Dubai, America, Turkey, South Africa, Ghana, Niger Republic, Qatar etc.
“90% of them are friends to every government in power and are in direct contact & are being patronized constantly, seamlessly and silently because they know or hold the all mighty ” public service formula” of (Mis)managing the public treasury even at retirement.
“90% of them have never stayed in the local governments of their origin or have they invested a single Naira in them.
“90% of them are aware that the primary, secondary, universities and other training centers they attended free have become desolate, hollow and destroyed with no furniture, no laboratories, no teachers etc but they will never offer any help because they are up there on the ladder.
“90% of them are aware that the road networks leading to their states and local government areas are not motorable, but they care less because they always fly home when the need arises.
“90% of them are aware that the dispensaries and hospitals in their states and local governments have collapsed, but do not have the conscience to give a support rather they allow millions to die from opportunistic and treatable diseases that sometimes cost less than N10k to treat.
“When I watched them asking for donations to raise N100 Billion, I just laughed because from the roll call of those who attended (I have the list) 50 among them are worth more than N500 Billion each, which makes that donation drive as heartless, hypocritical and deceptive.
“For me and many, ACF is routinely celebrating (Death, Diseases, Destitution, Delay, Decay and Decimation (D.D.D.D.D. and D.) of the Northern region before their very eyes”.
OTHERS are no less UNCOMPLIMENTARY in their remarks about the self-serving organisation.
The intrepid woman politician from a North Western state of the country, thinks that the organisation is as good as a great thorn in the heart of the NORTH.
SHE claimed to have attended a meeting of the organisation where the only agenda was to urge Northerners to support Tinubu’s 2027 Second Term ambition. And when she asked why the region would REELECT someone who is DISDAINFULLY against it, a ranking OLD member of the organisation CANDIDLY replied that, “BECAUSE OF OUR POCKETS”.
MAY God shame those whose REGION and its people remain the laughing stock of the rest of the country, while their only PASTIME is watching over their illegally acquired wealth balloons into BILLIONS of Naira.
Malumfashi wrote from ABUJA.
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