By Hassan MUAZ
Northern Youth Council of Nigeria (NYCN), an Arewa group, has vowed to disrupt campaign events of Igbo presidential candidates in the North after a similar threat by a prominent Ndigbo group ahead of the 2023 general polls.
President of NYCN, Comrade Isah Abubakar disclosed this while reacting to a threat of the apex Igbo socio-political and cultural organization, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide to oppose Atiku Abubakar and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), on which platform the former Vice President recently emerged Presidential candidate.
Reacting to Atiku’s victory, 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 group also made it clear that no Igbo person would be allowed to campaign and project Atiku’s presidential agenda in the region, describing the PDP, which is the main opposition political party in Nigeria as having been reduced to a “Northern party.”
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.
But NYCN National President, 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 the next year’s presidential election.
According to him, Ohanaeze, as a group, has turned itself into an agent of disunity, whose stock in trade is to incite Nigerians of varying ethnic, religious and political creeds against each other.
Isah urged South East elders to quickly call Ohanaeze to order, with a view to forestalling the possibility of other regional ethnic groups issuing the same kind of violent threats to politicians from the South East.
“If they don’t do the needful, we may be forced to also take drastic action against South East presidential candidates. 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 were cut to size,” Isah said.