By; AMOS TAUNA, Kaduna
Northern Youth Council of Nigeria (NYCN), has promised not to allow campaign of any Igbo presidential candidate in the North ahead of the 2023 general elections.
The group stated that a prominent Ndigbo group has also made a similar threat not to allow any Northern presidential candidate hold rally in any state in the South-East.
Comrade Isah Abubakar, President of NYCN, said this while speaking to New Nigerian on Monday in Kaduna, reacting to a threat by the Igbo socio-political and cultural organization, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide opposing the candidacy of Atiku Abubakar, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), presidential flag bearer who recently emerged its presidential candidate in the 2023 general elections.
Reacting to Atiku’s victory, he explained that Ohanaeze, had in a statement through its Secretary-General, Mazi Okechukwu Isiguzoro, said that the PDP presidential candidate would never become Nigeria’s president.
The NYCN said, “No Igbo person will be allowed to campaign and project Atiku’s presidential agenda in the region, PDP, the main opposition political party in Nigeria has reduced itself as a Northern party.”
According to him, Ohanaeze rejected Atiku’s candidacy, alleging that his emergence as PDP’s candidate was a plot by “unpatriotic Northerners” against the Southern part of the country.
Comrade Isah Abubakar, however, lampooned Ohanaeze for attempting to stock mutual hatred, and ethnic division among Nigerians, by coming out openly to condemn the transparent process that threw up Atiku as PDP’s flagbearer ahead of next year’s presidential election.
He alleged that Ohanaeze as a group, has turned itself into agent of disunity, whose stock in trade, he added, is to incite Nigerians of varying ethnic, religious and political creeds against each other.
The President of the group urged South East elders to quickly call Ohanaeze to order, with a view to forestalling the possibility of other regional ethnic groups issuing same kind of violent threats to politicians from the South East for the corporate existence of the country.
He assured that if they don’t do the needful, the youths in the North may be forced to also take a drastic action against South East presidential candidates, saying, “We won’t allow them to set their foot on our land. Otherwise, the consequences will be grave. It is time radical and ethnic chauvinistic groups like the Ohanaeze are cut to size.”
