The first thing about Alwan Hassan is not his thunder but his stillness. He speaks and the quiet stretches, as though the air itself leans closer. Then comes the voice: firm, precise, a call pitched to stir a weary North from its divisions.
On Channels Television, Hassan brushed aside the Arewa Consultative Forum with surgeon-like ease. “They are not for the North,” he said, reminding viewers that the true struggle is not roads or railways but the jagged fault lines of tribe and faith.
He insists the North needs no handouts. With 424 local governments and land as vast as the horizon, it carries its own wealth. What it lacks, he argues, is peace. “Unite us, and we will build our own schools, our own roads, our own future.”
Hassan’s words come gilded with experience. He began in banking, cut through the ranks of First Bank, and steered Bank PHB through a crisis as a Central Bank appointee. Years in boardrooms have trained him to measure risk, weigh stakes, and wager on possibility.
Now he wagers on politics. Loyal to the APC and unabashedly so, he points to Tinubu’s policies: new cancer centres, student funds, and schools that pay stipends. “Who else will win in 2027?” he asks, daring rivals to prove their relevance.
But Hassan’s role is larger than a party soldier. As convener of the North-South Progressives Alliance, he brokers bridges where others see walls. “Technocrats must not hide from politics,” he insists, urging those with skill to bind themselves to vision.
What lingers after his speeches is resolve rather than rage. This is expected since he frames the North as an architect of things instead of a fractured victim. And if he has his way, history may recall him less as a politician than as a voice that turned silence into song.
Leave a comment