Details of the recent meeting between the Maj-Gen. Zamani Lekwot (rtd)-led Southern Kaduna Elders Forum and President Goodluck Jonathan at the presidential villa emerged yesterday as LEADERSHIP Weekend accessed the demands of the group. Among their requests was a plea to President Jonathan to end the marginalisation of Southern Kaduna, thirty-seven years after the creation of Kaduna State.
In the six-page address, Maj-Gen. Lekwot presented to the president, the zone expressed dismay that after delivering 608,094, representing 54 per cent of the votes in the 2011 presidential election in the state, it was rewarded with only 23 per cent of political appointees.
Also, the forum demanded that a military unit be established within a 20-kilometre radius of Kafanchan town to beef up security in the area to deter terrorists from further killing and maiming innocent villagers.
The zone wondered why in federal appointments, Kaduna North, which gave only 16 per cent of the total votes, got 15 appointees, taking up 50 per cent, followed by Kaduna Central with eight appointees (27 per cent). Kaduna South, for all its efforts, got seven appointees (23 per cent) and of the seven, in a Christian-dominated area, two were Muslims.
Lekwot added, “In zone 2 still, of the 386,713 votes cast for the PDP in the last presidential election, the votes of our kith and kin in Chikun local government area, that is, 128,128 and Kajuru local government area that is 89,184 totalled 209,312 as against the 178,585 of others.
Nevertheless, not a single Christian benefited from any federal appointment in this zone which is a shame.
“Out of the 31 federal appointments made in Kaduna State to date, only seven are in the southern senatorial zones which is the only PDP stronghold in the state given our 51 percent of the votes cast for the ruling party in the last presidential election et al...
“Accordingly, the above anomaly calls for urgent redress to assuage our untenable anguish because milking the cow, as it were, without feeding it, could be dangerous which, happily enough, is what the transformation agenda is all about to correct.”
LEADERSHIP Weekend reports that the forum’s elders told President Jonathan that they met Vice President Mohammed Namadi Sambo in December 2011 on the continued marginalisation of the area and he “promised to address the problem,” a situation that remains unresolved over a year after, thus forcing the forum’s direct petition to President Jonathan last Monday.
The forum further demanded the following:
*An equitable redress of the lopsided federal appointments, projects and institutions in Kaduna State to give our marginalised areas a fair chance to belong.
*The Kaduna eastern by-pass contract awarded in 2002 with a completion period of three years is only one third done, 11 years on.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Add A Comment