The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) is embroiled in a leadership tussle and alleged financial impropriety, Daily Trust reports.

The leadership crisis, which has, to a greater extent, divided the Forum into two, revolves around the roles of the Board of Trustees (BoT) and that of the National Executive Committee (NEC) in respect of the day-to-day running of the organisation.

On one hand, the Chairman of the BoT, Alhaji Bashir Dalhatu, with the support of others like General Haliru Akilu (rtd), among others, has asked some members of the BoT and NEC, whose tenures have reportedly elapsed, to leave their offices.

Dalhatu, who is the Wazirin Dutse in Jigawa State, served as the Minister of Transport and Aviation in 1993 during the Interim National Government of Chief Ernest Shonekan. He also served as Minister of Power and Steel from 1993 to 1997 and thereafter Minister of Internal Affairs from 1997 to 1998 during the General Sani Abacha regime.

On the other hand, the Secretary General of the organisation, Malam Murtala Aliyu, who is one of those asked to leave, said his tenure will end in December, not now.

He reportedly has the support of some members, including the Chairman of the NEC, Barrister Mamman Mike Osuman, SAN; the spokesman, Professor Tukur Baba, among others.

Established in the year 2000, the ACF, a socio-cultural organisation which draws its membership from the 19 northern states, seeks to protect the interests of Northern Nigeria.

Among others, its mission is to promote unity, peace and socio-economic development across the North, while advocating for the region’s political and security interests within the Nigerian federation. The Forum also serves as a platform for dialogue among northern leaders.

Even though the disagreement in the group over the roles of its organs had been brewing for some time, the crack became more visible shortly after the 25th anniversary of the ACF.

Credible sources within the ACF told the Daily Trust that the lodgement of about N3.9 billion donated to the organisation in a new account at JAIZ Bank, rather than in any of the main accounts of the organisation in First Bank, United Bank for Africa (UBA) and Unity Bank, has caused disaffection among members.

Recall that there was an endowment fund during the 25th anniversary celebration of the ACF held in November 2025, during which some notable northern leaders and businessmen donated over N3.9 billion, in addition to pledges that are yet to be redeemed.

Besides, there was also nearly N700 million donated by some northern leaders in order to organise the 25th anniversary. Details of how the funds were utilised are being questioned.

Handover to Bukar Zarma, General Akilu tells Murtala Aliyu

Daily Trust reports that, in a statement he issued on Friday, May 1, General Akilu, who is also a member of the BoT and chairman of the leadership selection committee of the ACF, said they had submitted recommendations regarding the expiration of the tenure of some senior officials and the filling of the resulting vacancies.

He said in a memo dated April 23, 2026, the BoT had stated that members had deliberated on the tenure of certain officials of the Forum.

General Akilu said that after the meeting, it was resolved that, in line with the ACF Constitution, BoT leaders should serve a single tenure of six years, while NEC leaders should serve for three years, renewable for another three years.

He said the tenure of the officials who assumed office on March 10, 2020, and completed their six-year term on March 10, 2026, had expired.

Those affected, according to him, include the Deputy Chairman of the BoT, Senator Fred Orti from Benue State; the Vice Chairman of the BoT, Amb. Ibrahim Mai Sule from Yobe State; the Deputy Chairman of the NEC and Wazirin Katsina, Sen. Ibrahim Ida; and the Secretary General, Murtala Aliyu.

According to General Akilu, “The committee noted that these positions have now become vacant. Mallam Murtala Aliyu has been given until Friday, May 15, 2026, to complete his handover notes and other departure formalities.”

He said the selection committee took some steps, including creating a database of potential candidates for the four vacant positions.

He said, “With the exception of the secretary general position, the selection and appointment into the other three positions have been postponed pending the conclusion of the ongoing review of the ACF Constitution.”

According to General Akilu, “In the interim, an acting secretary general has been appointed to ensure the smooth day-to-day running of the Forum. Mallam Bukar Zarma was appointed to serve as acting secretary general. His appointment will cease upon the appointment of a substantive Secretary General.”

I remain the secretary-general – Murtala Aliyu

But when asked why he was singled out to leave ahead of others, Murtala Aliyu said the tenure of the secretary general is not a straight six-year term like that of BoT members.

He also questioned the channel of communication used to ask him to hand over his responsibilities, saying it ought to have come either from the Chairman of the NEC, Barrister Osuman, SAN, or the spokesman of the ACF, Professor Tukur Baba, and not General Akilu.

He said members of the Board of Trustees have one six-year term, while members of the NEC, who should serve for three years, have the opportunity to do another three years.

Murtala said after they completed their first three years as NEC members, he and the Deputy Chairman, Senator Ibrahim Ida, were re-elected for another three years.

“So they are now mixing up things,” he said, referring to the BoT under the leadership of Alhaji Bashir Dalhatu and the selection committee headed by General Akilu.

“And there have been discussions; we have made it clear to them that, look, our tenure, in fact, our reappointment, was on July 25, 2023, but the working committee was not inaugurated until December 12, 2023, and should end on December 12, 2026.

“Now, some of the arguments that the secretary general should go is that, while we were waiting for the confirmation, the secretary general was still working. And again, any reasonable person knows that, as secretary general in an interim capacity, as the accounting officer, you cannot just abandon the desk until someone is appointed.

“So, these are some of the challenges that they have not been able to sort out. Like I said, the national working committee and the NEC will meet on Wednesday in Kaduna and will come out with an official position on the leadership of the ACF,” he said.

One of our correspondents reached out to General Akilu to know why he released the statement, but he did not pick his call.

But in a response to a text message, he said: “Please, speak to Malam Bukar Zarma, the acting secretary general of ACF.”

We’ve a new secretary-general, BoT chairman insists

And when contacted, the BoT Chairman, Dalhatu, asked our correspondent whether he had the ACF Constitution, and he answered in the affirmative.

“Okay, I will also share some documents with you to go through before we can have the interview,” the Wazirin Dutse said.

He had yet to call back as of the time of filing this report.

However, in a statement he released last night, Dalhatu dismissed the planned NEC meeting in Kaduna.

“It has come to our attention that Mallam Murtala Aliyu, whose tenure as Secretary General of the Arewa Consultative Forum, ended on the 10th of March, 2026, has issued a notice of an emergency meeting of the National Executive Council of the ACF to hold on Wednesday, 6th of May, 2026.

“A notice of meeting such as this, issued and signed by a former official, is, ipso facto, illegal, null and void.

“Members of the ACF are advised to disregard this unauthorized notice of meeting and not to attend. Staff of the headquarters of ACF are hereby instructed to desist from taking any orders from the former secretary general or any other official who holds no lawful position of responsibility in the Forum.

Recall that on the 23rd of April, 2026, the ACF leadership selection committee presided over by General Haliru Akilu, met and took many critical decisions including the appointment of an acting ACF secretary general.

“For the avoidance of any doubt, I stress that Murtala M. Aliyu, ex-secretary general of ACF, cannot summon, sign or circulate notice of any meeting of any description of any organ of the ACF,” the statement said.

NEC chair disagrees with BoT chairman

Daily Trust reports that few minutes after the statement from the BoT Chairman Alhaji Dalhatu, the NEC Chairman, Barrister Osuman, issued another statement insisting that the meeting in Kaduna will hold as planned.

The statement said, “I have in my capacity as NEC Chairman directed that a meeting of National Executive Council (NEC) should hold on Wednesday 6th May 2026. In so instructing, I took refuge under Section 13 subsections 1(a), (b), (c) & (d) of the ACF Constitution.

“For emphasis, Section 13 subsection 1(a) reads: “The Chairman shall have the following function:

“To convene all meetings of the National Executive Council & the working Committee.

“It was in that vein that I directed that formal notices be sent to members through our designated platform, to wit: that a NEC Meeting scheduled for Wednesday the 6th April 2026 be held at our Kaduna No. 11A Sokoto Road Headquarters. To my shock, Bashir Dalhatu – the Chairman of BOT has in print, personally instructed otherwise. ACF Members (and in Particular NEC Members) are advised to ignore this aberration. I re-emphasise that ALL MEMBERS OF NEC should please ignore Bashir’s unconstitutional negative interjection & attend this meeting in the interest of our precious AREWA CONSULTATIVE FORUM (ACF) for the love of our people & region. Thank you. May Allah bless you all & grant you journey mercies,” he said.

There shouldn’t be bickering in ACF – Sen Orti

Daily Trust also reached out to other ACF officials who were asked to vacate their offices by the BoT.

Speaking on the phone, the Deputy Chairman of the BoT, Senator Fred Orti, said his tenure had ended and he had left for Benue State.

He said initially, the tenure of the BoT members was five years, but it was extended to six years.

But he expressed reservations as to why General Akilu would issue a statement.

“There is a set-up in the ACF; there is the NEC that has a Secretary-General. There is also its spokesman, Professor Tukur Baba. I don’t know in which capacity General Akilu issued a statement and at what forum,” he said.

When asked to comment on the reported crack within the ACF, he said, “There are policy statements in the organisation that are not supposed to come from people like me. If I say that, I am backbiting.

“And at this age, I am not supposed to be saying that. It is supposed to come out officially from a spokesperson or from the secretary of the organisation. I am not supposed to do that at my age. I am not supposed to do that with the experience and the time I have spent with the ACF.

“And so, there is not supposed to be so much bickering about it. It (ACF) was supposed to emulate what the people who held Arewa together at that time were doing. That is what that organisation was set up for. The people who held Arewa together, like the Sardauna of Sokoto, did not care which religion you came from. He did not care which tribe you came from.

“You know his popular saying that we have people from many tribes, many cultures, but what binds us together is the fact that we are Northerners. What binds us together is more than what divides us,” he said.

“And that was how he worked. Remember, he was in a different party, but he would take along other people who were in different political parties. And because of that, the North was stable; the North was developing.

“When they discovered that the North was being set aside after the death of these old leaders, then the Arewa Consultative Forum was introduced to hold the North together. But there shouldn’t be this bickering around the North.”

Ambassador Ibrahim Mai Sule, who is the Vice Chairman, BoT, did not pick his call and also did not respond to text messages sent to him as of press time.

Even though Senator Ibrahim Ida, who is the Deputy Chairman, NEC, did not pick his call, he nonetheless sent a text message asking our correspondent to talk to the Chairman or the Secretary-General.

NEC’s initial statement

Earlier yesterday while responding to the May 1 statement issued by the BoT through General Akilu, the spokesman of the ACF, Professor Baba, described the directive given to some officials to leave as “totally false, and the purported action from which the announcement was derived is unconstitutional.”

He said, “Consequently, Mr Mike Mamman Osuman, LLM, SAN, FCIArb, OFR, Chairman of the ACF, has authorised that this disclaimer be issued to disabuse the minds of members of the ACF, the press, and the public in general, but especially the teeming masses of Arewa who have been suffering untold existential socio-economic hardships.

“Emphatically, the leadership of the Forum has neither authorised, known about, nor communicated on the purported change. The announcement should, therefore, be treated as null, void, and of no effect whatsoever.”

Among other observations, Professor Baba said that the power to set up operational committees for any purpose is vested only in the NEC, vide Section 14 of the ACF Constitution. The purported set-up of a Constitution Review Committee is unconstitutional.

According to him, “The stated Leadership Selection Committee (under General Akilu) is not known to the Constitution and exists at the behest of the NEC, in the exercise of its powers under item (o) of Section 14(1). The Leadership Selection Committee is, per se, only a creation of the NEC as an ad hoc body for the purpose of vetting and making recommendations to the NEC for consideration and transmission to the General Assembly for approval.

“The last Leadership Selection Committee fulfilled its role in 2023 and has since been dissolved. It is yet to be reconstituted. The NEC is already in the process of reconstituting the Selection Committee. In the event, any action, assignment, function, or announcement(s) by person(s) claiming to exercise such putative functional power is, ipso facto, irregular, unconstitutional, and will certainly remain unrecognised. “

He said Murtala Aliyu remains in office as Secretary-General until a successor emerges in accordance with due process.

“It is highly regrettable that the ACF is forced to issue this statement, which may send wrong signals about some leadership crisis in the organisation. There is no such crisis, even as the Forum has been aware of clandestine and subterranean moves to engineer one to destabilise or annihilate the organisation, most plausibly by incentivised agents operating from within and outside the ACF,” he said.

Allegation of movement of funds to another account

Daily Trust reports that apart from the leadership misunderstanding in the ACF, some members have raised the alarm over the alleged depositing of funds generated during the endowment drive of the Forum into a Jaiz Bank account, instead of the known accounts of the ACF.

Over N3.9 billion has been received so far by the ACF, but some members said they want clarification on where the monies were kept and what the officials intend to do with them.

Those under scrutiny are the BoT Chairman, Bashir Dalhatu, and the Secretary-General, Murtala Aliyu.

Aliyu confirmed in an interview that indeed a separate account was opened at Jaiz Bank, but also wondered why the funds were moved to the same Jaiz Bank in Kano at the instance of Bashir Dalhatu.

He admitted that it was he and Dalhatu who signed the letter directing Jaiz Bank to open an account for the ACF. This was when he asked at what time the new account was opened.

“The contention is that the Chairman of the BoT cannot be and should not have been a signatory to the account.

“And the Chairman of the BoT caused the account to be moved to Kano instead of our traditional location in Kaduna. So, I think this is why there is contention. But so far, no money is missing.”

When asked if the money had not been tampered with, he said no.

According to him, “The N2.5 billion was moved to an investment account formerly by the two signatories, which are the Chairman of the Board of Trustees and myself.

“But then, later, he (the BoT Chairman) moved N1.4 billion single-handedly, and that is what is of concern, but there is no money that is missing,” he said.

When asked why they did not keep the money in their existing accounts, he said the essence was to keep the endowment funds separately.

“The Jaiz Bank account was opened specifically to warehouse the endowment fund collections,” he said.

A member of the ACF, Murtala Abubakar, had written a petition to the NEC over alleged constitutional violations, financial misconduct, and leadership misdirection/failure.

It was learnt that the petition has been forwarded to the ACF Ethics Committee under the chairmanship of Professor Nuhu Mohammed Jamo.

When contacted yesterday, Professor Jamo confirmed that they had received the petition.

“It is before us; the issue is complex, and due process must be followed. We have done the initial step, which is sending the petition to the person accused. After his response, we will take the next step, but we should note that a petition is an allegation; he who alleges must prove. We hope to resolve the matter in two weeks,” he said.

How ACF operates

The ACF Constitution recognises different organs, including Patrons, which comprise former heads of state and presidents who are of Northern states’ origin.

Then there is the General Assembly, which has members of the BoT, NEC, executive committees of the state chapters and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), as well as all registered members.

There is also the BoT, which should have 174 members made up of three persons from each of the senatorial districts of the 19 northern states and the FCT.

There is also the NEC, under which the NWC is subsumed. (Daily Trust)