In a nation where silence often masks complicity, former Senator Shehu Sani is once again challenging the Northern elite—this time for their collective failure to hold former President Muhammadu Buhari accountable during his eight-year rule.
Appearing on Politics Today on Channels TV, Sani didn’t mince words. He blamed the North’s current struggles from insecurity to deepening poverty on what he called a culture of blind loyalty and ethnic solidarity.
“Our refusal to speak the truth to the Buhari regime… led the North to where it is today,” he said, noting that while schools closed and villages were attacked, many Northern leaders kept quiet.
According to Sani, a fear of ‘betraying the North’ became more important than saving it. When he raised concerns on the Senate floor, it wasn’t the opposition who fought him—it was his own Northern colleagues.
“They expected silence because the President was one of us,” he recalled.
In contrast, he praised the Southwest for speaking truth to power under President Bola Tinubu, regardless of ethnic ties. “They criticise their own when necessary,” he said, urging the North to learn from that example.
But even as Sani positions himself as a truth-teller, questions remain. Could he and others have spoken louder, earlier, or acted differently while still in power? Was one voice ever enough to shift a culture of silence?
Still, in a region grappling with the fallout of years of unchecked leadership, Sani’s comments may be a late awakening, but they are an urgent reminder.