By Ishaya Ibrahim
Chairman of Arewa Youth Consultative Forum (AYCF), Alhaji Shettima Yerima, has said that the choice of who would become Nigeria’s president in 2019 cannot be dictated by the South West as it did in 2015.
In a press statement, Yerima said his organization has observed that Nigeria is being pushed back to the political scenario of 2015, in which the Southwest region dominated the decision- making efforts on who should be Nigeria’s president.
He said even though the North, out of modesty, merely allowed that historic imposition, the consequence of such action has become wasted years of poverty, hunger, unemployment, general underdevelopment and disturbing levels of stagnation.
“We will no longer tolerate the kind of imposition that brought the nation’s economy to its knees and all we now get is empty propaganda instead of performance. This is an insult on the sensibilities of all Nigerians who struggled to drive away the military in order to pave way for democracy,” Yerima said.
He said they would resist any form of imposition from people who know little or nothing about the kind of leadership they want.
“We cannot fathom why people outside the North should turn our region into their political experiment field, choosing a candidate who would take orders from them and abandon his own people’s wishes and aspirations. This is primitive, unacceptable and a smear on well-known democratic principles of a modern, independent nation that we have been in over 50 years.
“The earlier this shameful manipulation of our hopes in democracy is stopped, the better for our relationship with our neighbours.
“On no account should anyone take the North for granted again, especially on the matter of 2019 presidency. We are no fools and the world has come a long way from the era of political obscurantism and harmful patronage,” he said.
Yerima said it was disheartening that the Northwest was now slowly going into the hands of toxic political class, whose political madness has now reached alarming levels.
“How else can anyone, in his right senses, explain the emergence of nine presidential candidates all from one geopolitical zone? What has gone wrong with the North’s sense of decency in politics? Imagine the exemplary style of the Northeast, which has just two candidates! Isn’t that a lesson for the scattered and uncoordinated Northwest?” he queried.