Despite alleged directive by a section of the Northern leaders for their indigenes in the South to relocate to the North in view of alleged insecurity challenges, Hausa indigenes in the industrial town of Nnewi have said they were not contemplating relocating from the state.
Recall that some members of the Northern Elders Forum and the Coalition of the Northern Groups had asked Fulani herdsmen to leave the Southern part of Nigeria following alleged threat against them.
But the secretary to the Hausa community in Nnewi, Alhaji Sani Suleman said it would be difficult to leave the Southern part of the country where they had spent decades of their lives and have been living peacefully with their hosts.
According to him, some of them had lived in the region for more than forty years, insisting that anybody calling for their relocation to the North at this time was mistaken.
He said: “We have been living in the East since 1986 and it will not be possible for someone, after settling down in an area for decades, to just wake up and relocate to his state of origin. “The Almighty Allah that created Nigeria and brought us together knows the reason he did so. One person cannot just break Nigeria for his personal interest.
“As we are living here in Nnewi, so are people from other parts of Nigeria living in the North and there is no way one can just get up and say Easterners go, Northerners go. It is not possible.”
Suleman said no fewer than 5,000 Hausas were residing in Nnewi and its environs, adding that their greatest preoccupation was to secure parcels of land to build mosques, cemetery and market.
“We have secured a piece of land in Nnewi to build a market, though not big enough.
We have appealed to Igwe Nnewi, Chief Kenneth Orizu III to help us secure pieces of land for our needs, but he told us that land belongs to the government. We have also appealed to the state government to allocate land to us and we are still waiting for government response,” he said
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