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Southern Nigeria spearheading restructuring and secession agitations because of 2023 – Ex-NHIS chief

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Buhari sacks NHIS boss, Usman Yusuf

A former Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Prof. Usman Yusuf, said on Saturday the Igbo and Yoruba people are using the increasing agitations for succession and restructuring as blackmail tools to force their way to Aso Rock in 2023.

Yusuf, who stated this in a chat with The Sun, also described the ban on open grazing by the Southern Governors’ Forum as nonsense.

He alleged that most kidnappers and armed robbers in the North are Southerners.

The ex-NHIS chief said the 17 Southern governors who met in Asaba, Delta State, on May 11 should have consulted the Fulani groups before banning open grazing in the region.

He said: “What they did was unconstitutional, null and void. Secondly, making a particular law that is specifically against an ethnic group is dangerous. I also said that the Asaba declaration is nothing but a premeditated quit order for all Fulani to leave the South.

“It is just like the governor of Kano or any state in the North saying, ‘do not sell spare parts and does not provide an alternative place for Igbo traders to sell their wares.

READ ALSO: Afenifere advocates restructuring rather than Constitution Review

“Many of these Fulani in the South have lived there for generations. Many don’t even speak Hausa. So, if I’m the governor of a state in the North and say, do not sell spare parts in this place, but I did not provide an alternative place for you to sell spare parts, it is just like saying Igbo spare parts dealers should leave my place.

“Asaba declaration was nothing but a quit order for all Fulani to leave the South. Fulani herders have started leaving the South-East, which is very dangerous. Those 17 governors didn’t think through the national security implications of their political gerrymandering in Asaba. Those herders are citizens of the South; you don’t make laws without consulting them.”

He accused the South-East leaders of neglecting the killing of northerners in the region and going to Abuja in search of presidency, saying the way they are going, South-East would be worse than the North-East.

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