The Northern Elders Forum (NEF), yesterday, warned its political leaders and elites against remaining silent over the Federal Government’s decision to site the national gold refinery in Lagos State, insisting that the region is not asking for favour but constitutional fairness.
 
In a strongly worded message addressed to northern elites, political leaders and stakeholders, the forum said the location of the refinery outside the country’s major gold-producing regions in Northern Nigeria was neither an oversight nor a policy error, but a decision with far-reaching economic and security implications.
 
Signed by its spokesperson, Professor Abubakar Jika Jiddere, NEF accused the Federal Government of stripping value addition from northern communities while concentrating industrial benefits in Lagos and its environs.
 
According to the forum, the decision perpetuates an extractive economic model in which raw materials are sourced from the North while processing, branding, financing and industrial infrastructure are located elsewhere.
 
NEF said Section 14(3), which enshrines the federal character principle, was designed to prevent the concentration of national advantages in ways that marginalise any region, while Section 16 mandates the state to manage the economy on the basis of social justice and equality of opportunity.
 
Jiddere said: “The decision to locate Nigeria’s gold refinery in Lagos, while gold is mined from Northern soil, is not a policy error. It is not oversight. It is a deliberate act of economic dispossession. It strips value addition from Northern communities, exports opportunity to the already privileged centre, and condemns the source regions to poverty, unemployment, and perpetual insecurity.
 
“To again remove the locus of value addition from these communities is to perpetuate an extractive model reminiscent of colonial economics where raw materials are sourced from the periphery and wealth is accumulated at the centre. This is not development. It is internal colonialism.

“This injustice is systemic, not accidental. For decades, Northern Nigeria has been reduced to a triple extraction zone: the supplier of raw minerals, the supplier of agricultural produce, and the supplier of cheap labour, while processing, branding, financing, and industrial infrastructure are consistently sited elsewhere.”