MBF President: Middle Belt Forum is Not a Separatist Group, Nor Seeking to Divide North

• Region seeks recognition, equity and freedom from imposed Arewa identity

Chuks Okocha in Abuja

The Middle Belt Forum (MBF) has rejected claims the forum is a recent political invention aimed at destabilising Northern Nigeria.

The group rather said that Middle Belt movement is not separatist   that seeks recognition, equity and freedom from what he described as an imposed “Arewa identity”.

President of the forum, Dr. Pogu Bitrus, described such assertions as historically inaccurate and designed to undermine the Middle Belt’s growing political consciousness.

A statement issued by the forum’s spokesman, Luka Binniyat, on Tuesday said that, in a detailed response to a widely circulated article titled “The Manufactured Middle Belt: The Untold History, Foreign Backing and the Agenda to Fracture Northern Nigeria”, authored under the pseudonym Safyan Umar Yahaya, Bitrus stated that the narrative misrepresents both history and colonial records.

Bitrus explained the Middle Belt refers to indigenous ethnic nationalities of Northern Nigeria that existed outside the authority of the Sokoto Caliphate and the Kanem-Borno Empire prior to British colonisation, noting these groups now span 14 northern states and the Federal Capital Territory.

He added that the Middle Belt consists of indigenous peoples who were never conquered or ruled by the Islamic caliphates of Sokoto and Borno before colonial rule, stressing that this position is supported by historical scholarship rather than political sentiment.

He said: “Pre-colonial polities such as the Kwararafa Confederacy and the Jukun states; the Igala Kingdom, Borgu Kingdom, the Nupe Kingdom, Zuru (Lelna) Kingdom in today’s Southern Kebbi, as well as Tiv, Idoma, Gbagyi, Birom, Angas and Eggon societies, among others, possessed distinct political systems and resisted slave raids and forced Islamisation.”

He argued that British colonial conquest further shaped Middle Belt political consciousness, noting that colonial administrators documented prolonged resistance by Middle Belt communities to colonialism, compared with the relatively swift subjugation of emirate enclaves.

Because of this resistance, Bitrus explained the British imposed “indirect rule” by force, subordinating Middle Belt groups to emirate authorities that the vast majority of Middle Belt peoples had resisted.

He added that this forced arrangement, rather than any foreign conspiracy, laid the foundation for later agitation.

He also dismissed arguments that the Middle Belt lacked recognition before the 1940s, describing reliance on colonial political maps as “intellectually indefensible”.

According to him, colonial correspondence referenced the Middle Belt as early as the first decade of the 20th century, although British authorities resisted the creation of a Middle Belt Region in order to preserve the political dominance of Hausa, Fulani and Kanuri oligarchs.

On the United Middle Belt Congress (UMBC), led by the late Joseph Sarwuan Tarka, Bitrus explained the movement articulated long-standing grievances, including land dispossession, political exclusion and cultural suppression.

He also rejected claims of missionary or foreign manipulation in the formation of the UMBC, saying that Middle Belt leaders were among the most educated Nigerians of their era, who directly experienced suppression, oppression and exploitation of their people’s labour and resources, and were sufficiently educated to form alliances to resist injustice.

Addressing contemporary politics, Bitrus stated the Middle Belt movement is not separatist but seeks recognition, equity and freedom from what he described as an imposed “Arewa identity”.

He further dismissed attempts to portray the Middle Belt as a religious project, noting that the region remains religiously plural, with Muslims, Christians and adherents of traditional religions represented within the MBF leadership.

He further argued that the long-assumed Hausa-Fulani political bloc is increasingly fracturing, citing growing dissent among Hausa intellectuals and what he described as manufactured Fulani violence affecting rural Hausa communities.

Dr Bitrus, who hails from Chibok in Southern Borno State, said the current developments reflect not a conspiracy against the North, but what he described as the “collapse of an artificial political arrangement sustained by history and power rather than consent.”