Northern leaders hypocrisy and the collapse of one Nigeria

By Celphas Iyorhen

*Wednesday, 21st January, 2026*

Northern leaders who oppose the breakup of Nigeria are not defending unity. They are defending a system that feeds them power while other people bleed. Their opposition to separation has nothing to do with patriotism and everything to do with control, entitlement and fear of accountability.

In September 2025, Vice President Kashim Shettima stood before the United Nations General Assembly and openly supported a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. In his words, “The people of Palestine are not collateral damage in a civilisation searching for order. They are human beings, equal in worth, entitled to the same freedoms and dignities that the rest of us take for granted… a two-state solution remains the most dignified path to lasting peace.”

Those were polished words, delivered with confidence and moral posture.
But that speech exposed the deepest hypocrisy of the Northern ruling class.
If “too many lives being lost” is enough reason to support separation abroad, then what excuse do Kashim Shettima and his political bloc have for opposing separation in Nigeria?

Between 2014 and 2025, the number of Christians slaughtered across Northern Nigeria far exceeds the entire population of Gaza. Entire communities have been wiped out. Churches burnt. Clergymen murdered. Women violated. Children orphaned. Yet the same man who found his voice for Palestine has never once stood at any global platform to say that too many lives are being lost in Kaduna, Plateau, Benue, Taraba or Southern Kaduna.

Shettima knows these killings. He was part of the political establishment when Boko Haram rose and spread. He was embedded in the same Northern power structure that enabled insecurity to mutate into a permanent industry.
Yet he chose international applause over local justice. That is not leadership. That is calculated deception.

Northern leaders have perfected a double standard. One moral code for the world. Another brutal code for the people trapped under their dominance. While they cry for human dignity abroad, Christians in the North, especially those whose ethnic identities were crushed and relabelled under Hausa-Fulani domination, are killed quietly and buried without headlines. They are given counterfeit identities, stripped of voice and treated as expendable.

In the North, everyone understands the proverb: “The familiarity of the chicken with human beings does not save it from slaughter.” Northern Christians are that chicken.

For decades, they have lived like Joseph Stalin’s proverbial chicken. Their feathers are plucked bit by bit. Their dignity stripped gradually. They are told to follow quietly and be grateful for survival. They pay taxes to a country that cannot protect them. They pay ransom to bandits who operate freely inside their supposed homeland. They exist without power, without voice, without safety.

And where are the men who claim to represent them? You hear names like Bishop Hassan Kukah, Yakubu Dogara, George Akume, Christopher Musa, Mike Aondoakaa, Simon Lalong, Caleb Mutfwang, Ishaku Darius, Cephas Agbu, Jonah Jang, Samuel Ortom, David Mark, Gabriel Suswam, General John Enenche, Barnabas Gemade, Labaran Maku. Big names. Heavy titles. But politically, they are docile, mute and harmless. They are local champions who fear power more than injustice.
Like castrated male animals, they exist but cannot fight.
Like Stalin’s chicken, they have learned to follow after being stripped of courage.
Ask them one direct question: what is your position on restructuring or separating Nigeria to stop the bloodshed? Silence.
Do they believe that unity in marginalisation is sacred, as the caliphate ideology insists?
Or are they simply tired of burying their people quietly?
None of them will answer publicly, because speaking the truth in the North is not fashionable, it attracts punishment.

The example is clear. Obadiah MaiLafia, former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, spoke openly against the killings in Southern Kaduna. He was arrested. Not long after, he died under suspicious circumstances. That single incident sent a clear message across the North: speak out, and you will be dealt with.
Since then, silence has become a survival strategy.
While Shettima performs morality at the United Nations, Northern Christians live in fear daily. This is not unity. This is organised oppression dressed as nationalism.

The Northern ruling class has dragged Nigeria backward deliberately. They created Hisbah when Nigeria already has the Nigeria Police Force. They imposed Sharia law in a country with a constitution and courts meant for all citizens. They destroyed industries and social freedoms in the North, yet enjoy tax revenues generated elsewhere. Christians are killed openly because extremist interpretations of religion brand them as infidels.

Sultan of Sokoto, as the head of Muslims in the North, you preside over a region once nicknamed “Born to Rule”, later rebranded as the seat of the caliphate. The name changed, but the mentality did not. Today, Nigerians outside the North are saying it plainly: we are no longer prepared to live under this hypocrisy, violence and bad faith coexistence.

Let it be said without apology: the division of Nigeria is long overdue. Not because of hatred, but because the current structure is a slaughterhouse for millions.

We demand separation for the Middle Belt, for Biafra, and for Oduduwa. Even those who enabled this system must be rescued from the inferno it will eventually consume.
Unity that requires silence from victims is not unity. Peace that tolerates mass murder at home while preaching morality abroad is fraud.

Nigeria, as presently structured, is a crime scene. And crimes must be separated from their victims.

*Celphas Iyorhen*
A Concerned Citizen from the Middle-Belt