The Secretary of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), Professor Ango Abdullahi has said that the northern part of Nigeria is prepared in case of an eventual break up of Nigeria.

Abdullahi, who is a former Vice Chancellor of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, made the disclosure while speaking at a two-day conference organized by the Arewa Research and Development Project.

“If we can’t go back to 1914, we should go back to 1960 regional governance. North is not afraid of getting its North back, just like those that want East and West. I see this as a political manoeuvre and North will not take it.

“Restructuring means so many things to many people, but to me, I am not speaking for Unongo or NEF, when I was confronted about this by people from the South, we sat with Prof. Nwabueze and he said Nigeria is unbalanced and Lugard made mistake by amalgamation and North has always dominated that’s why they asked for national conference in 2014.

“We reminded him that the North has always sacrificed for the unity of Nigeria. I was a student when we got independence and we saw that each time there was need to unite Nigeria, the North made the largest sacrifice,” he said.

He added: “We ought to have realized from that, that from the failure of operators of the country, if we want to restructure Nigeria, we have to start from the beginning, 1914, North and South, let’s go our separate ways.”

He stressed that the clamour for restructuring and secession has always been made by  the southern region whenever a northerner was in charge of the nation’s leadership.