According to reports reaching Oyogist.com, the Christians, Non-Hausa/Fulani from the Southern part of Kaduna state and the Northern Muslim Hausa/Fulani in the same region, have decided to split Kaduna State into two new states.
The President of the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU), Hon. Jonathan Asake, while speaking at the Senate ad-hoc Committee and the House of Reps Special Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution said;
“The wish of Southern Kaduna is to have a brand new constitution, not an amended one.’“But in the absence of that, we are here to make our inputs as a people who have suffered suppression and oppression for a long time,”
“Southern Kaduna is made up of 67 ethnic nationalities spread in 13 of the 23 Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Kaduna state. It has a landmass of 26,000kmsq with an estimated population of 5.1 million. We are endowed with an educated population and with abundant natural resources,” he said.
“We have been demanding for a state of our own for over thirty years and Gurara state was among the 18 states proposed in the 2014 Confab report, We are demanding for the creation of the Gurara state after the amendment. This will help in solving the incessant conflicts between our people and the other divide,” he said.
The speaker of the northern part of Kaduna State,Abdulkadir Ahmed , while defending the memo of the group said;
“we are canvassing for the creation of New Kaduna state from the present Kaduna state and we want the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria amended to make this possible.”
“Kaduna South has been complaining of marginalisation ever since, even though Chiefdoms have been given to them and they occupy 60% of the workforce of Kaduna state,” he added.
“Let the state be split and if they are asking for Gurara state, let them have it,” he said.“This will solve all the crises we have been having in this state,”
“On our part, we are asking for the creation of ‘New Kaduna State’, which will include Kaduna North and Kaduna Central Senatorial zones,” he said.
