The 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 was issued by a prominent Ndigbo group ahead of the 2023 general polls.
President of NYCN, Comrade Isah Abubakar, was reacting to the threat of the apex Igbo socio-political and cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide to oppose Atiku Abubakar and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), on which platform the former vice-president recently emerged as its presidential candidate.
Reacting to Atiku’s victory, Ohanaeze, had, in an issued statement through its Secretary-General, 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 the NYCN National President, Comrade Isah Abubakar, however, chided the group 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.
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 the group 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 region.
“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 are cut to size”, Isah said.
