Northern mouthpiece Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) has rejected the planned relocation of key departments of the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria to Lagos by the Tinubu administration.
According to ACF, the relocations of the two agencies are a deliberate ploy to further underdeveloped the northern region of the country.
The CBN in an internal memo last week announced plans to transfer some of its departments to Lagos State, citing congestion at the headquarters in Abuja
The ACF, through its National Publicity Secretary, Prof Tukur Mohammed-Baba, in a statement in Kaduna on Sunday, kicked against planned relocations of the two federal agencies from Abuja to Lagos.
The statement was titled: ‘Planned relocation of key CBN units and FAAN headquarters to Lagos deliberate ploy to further underdeveloped northern Nigeria.’
Also, the ACF spokesman said the northern elders also faulted the recent appointment in the Ministry of Aviation where “only eight of 40 directors recently appointed are from the North!”
“The ACF calls on the Federal Government of Nigeria, and the National Assembly, to call on those agencies to retrace their steps and apply other honest means of addressing the alleged overcrowding in offices.
“Against the situation in Lagos, there is plenty of land in the Federal Capital Territory for expansion of office and other infrastructural facilities and such factors should not be used to obfuscate sinister motives.
“The ACF wishes to remind all concerned that decades ago, the seat of the capital of the Federal Republic was moved from Lagos to Abuja for reasons that remain valid, it is constitutional even more so today, constitutionally so, although, of course, a section of the country never liked the decision,” the ACF statement said.
