Confronting the Distortions of Our Shared History By Mohammed Sa'ad Abubakar Editor-in-Chief, Northern Nigeria Perspective Magazine Five years ago, writing in these same pages at the height of our national security crisis, an elder of the North, Sa'adu Abubakar Gambe, looked back at his youth as a student in Lagos in 1966. He warned the youth drumming the beats of war to seek the "path of honour and civilization" if Nigeria must separate. Unlike the anonymous internet fabrications falsely attributed to Southeastern professors today, Gambe’s 2021 reflections did not seek to demonize an entire tribe or weaponize falsehoods about the past. Instead, his writing carried the heavy, sorrowful dignity of a man who saw the innocence of his 1966 school days shattered by tribal politics. If our elders, who actually witnessed the trauma of 1966, can speak with such measured sobriety, we the younger generation of Northern writers have no excuse to peddle reckless, unve...