2015: Arewa youths restate opposition to Atiku, others

The Arewa Youth Consultative Forum has again blamed the high level of poverty and insecurity in the North on leaders from the region who have ruled the country before and vowed to oppose any one of them who wants to contest the presidency in the 2015 election.Shettima added that the youth of the region could no longer be deceived by the “self-serving leaders” and would stop any of them from emerging the consensus presidential candidate of the North for 2015 election.

He insisted that Ibrahim Babangida, Abdulsalami Abubakar, Abubakar Atiku, and all the other leaders from the region who had ruled the country at one time or the other must apologise for neglecting the region while they were in power.

“It is really unfortunate that people from the North have ruled this country for about 30 years and they did not develop the North. There is high level of poverty in the North, and now the biggest problem is insecurity. These people had the opportunity to avert this but they did not. They were only interested in enriching themselves.

“Some of them are dead now but some are still alive. In fact the ones that really caused this problem, people like IBB and Atiku to some extent, are moving around freely and parading themselves as leaders of the North.

“If these people want to be a part of the new arrangement to move the North forward, they must come out and apologise to the northern people. But if they think they can take advantage of the different meetings going on in the North to contest in 2015, then they should think again. We have been fooled before, we cannot be fooled again,” he said.

Shettima added that AYCF was carrying out an enlightenment campaign to ‘open the eyes’ of the northern youths to the real cause of the problems in the North with the hope that this would help to stem the violence in the region and engender development.

“The major problem in the North is lack of information. Many of the young people in the North are not informed and they don’t even know why they are fighting. Instead of channelling their frustration to the past leaders that caused it, they are killing poor people.”

The AYCF leader also said the North believes President Gooduck Jonathan would still contest in 2015 and are prepared to present their candidate too.

“We know that President Goodluck Jonathan would contest for presidency in 2015, but the North would present a candidate that can compete against him. It would be somebody who does not have a bad track record; somebody who is sound and knows the problems of Nigeria as a whole. So there is no chance for the past presidents, even the present governors would be held to account for what they have done,” he said.

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