Prominent Northerners on Saturday met at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, at the prompting of the Arewa Citizens Action for Change.
They, however, refused to disclose the purpose of the meeting to newsmen after the closed doors meeting, which lasted about four hours.
Among those in attendance were former military President, General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida; a former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar; a former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar; a former Inspector General of Police, Alhaji Gambo Jimeta; and a former Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Al-amin Daggash.
Others included prominent elder statesman, Alhaji Maitama Sule; a former Minister for Finance, Alhaji Adamu Ciroma, a former President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Mamman Nasir; Senator John Wash Pam; and erudite scholar and former Vice Chancellor of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Prof. Ango Abdullahi.
The prominent Northerners stylishly evaded questions from newsmen after the meeting.
Babangida, the first to leave the venue of the meeting, told newsmen that Abdullahi was the one to bried them.
General Abubakar also refused to speak with newsmen when he came out of the venue of the meeting.
Ex-VP Abubakar did the same.
When eventually Abdullai agreed to speak, he told newsmen that the reason for the meeting could not be disclosed.
He, however, confirmed that the meeting was chaired by Nasir, adding: “Concerning the crux of the meeting, perhaps, you will be disappointed that we are not giving you a formal, printed communiqué, which is usual after such meetings.
“But we thought that it is polite enough for us to give you the gist of the background to this meeting.
“Briefly, the elders you saw this morning, sitting in this room, discussed the general state of the nation in terms of its progress, in terms of peace, in terms of its insecurity.
“I think this is the main gist of it.
“So, the main message is: what can we do to bring about greater unity and peace in this country so that this county can surely move forward?
“This is the gist of this entire meeting today.
“Of course, in the course of discussions, we looked at other aspects of the state of the nation and in this kind of short meeting, it is unlikely, as you would expect, for us to deal exhaustively with any item.
“So, what the meeting decided was to set up sub-committees that will examine the various aspects that came before us for discussion and bring forward as soon as possible, of course, within the next two, three weeks, their various reports in details.
“And we are expecting that this should happen by the end of this month.”
He said one of the will be chaired by Daggash and another by Pam.