By Soni Daniel
Three serving governors in the country have run into trouble with security agencies over their alleged plot to incite violence that may engulf the northern part of the country, if not checkmated.
The three governors, who are in their final term of office, are reportedly drawn from the North East, North Central and the South-South geopolitical zones of the country.
The three governors, according to information available to Vanguard, clandestinely met in a secret location and mapped out their plan to stage a nationwide protest that would take the form of the 2020 #ENDSARS protest and bring the nation to its knees with a view to making Nigerians kick against the current administration and force a change.
Under the plot, which a foremost security agency is monitoring, the North East governor is to kick start the groundwork for the planned mass protest with a meeting with key stakeholders from the North in Kaduna with the allegation that the government has marginalized certain groups in his state and should be rejected in the 2023 polls.
On the other hand, the two vociferous North Central and South-South governors are to tackle the federal government for ‘woefully failing’ to provide basic needs for Nigerians in the areas of fuel, power, and education for children while promoting an ethnic and religious agenda at the expense of national interest.
Apparently acting the script, the North East governor reportedly met with several interest groups such as civil society organizations, labour leaders, students and disgruntled politicians in Kaduna earlier in the week to seek their consent for the planned mass protests.
The Kaduna meeting, according to the security agency, discussed in detail how to mobilize aggrieved Nigerian students who have been forced home by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, faceoff with the federal government, CSOs, NGOs, and aggrieved politicians to join the planned mass protests so as to register the kind of impact that the 2020 ENDSARS protest recorded nationwide.
According to the plot being hatched by the three governors, the planned mass protest is to move Nigerians to reject the current government and choose a new one as the next election is around the corner.
But a top security official, who is monitoring the actions of the three governors, told Sunday Vanguard that while they were not against freedom of association and protest, they were worried the planned protests could escalate into national violence that would be difficult to control as it was the case with ENDSARS in 2020.
“It is for this reason that our agency and sister security organisations have placed the three governors under constant watch and we are going to monitor their activities to ensure that they do not plunge the nation into avoidable crisis,” a senior official of the federal government said last night.
“We have also deployed our men to flashpoints to ensure that the country is not pushed into the precipice by malevolent politicians who have virtually come to the end of their tenure and do not care if the country burns or not,” the official said last night.