You Created This Mess, Arewa Youth Tells IBB, Abdulsalami, Atiku

The Arewa Youths Forum (AYF) yesterday blamed former northern Military Heads of States for the present woes and insecurity plaguing the region.

The northern youth forum in an emergency meeting in Kaduna, said that “all Northern leaders who held several positions, i.e Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, Atiku Abubakar and others had the golden opportunities of turning our region around for good, but the reverse was the case.”

A statement made available to LEADERSHIP and signed by the National President of the Forum, Alhaji Gambo Ibrahim Gujungu, said the northern leaders should know and accept much of the blame.

“Their going round and round in search of clear understanding of our woes is ruse and counter-productive. Because our indigent peoples are not in any way responsible for our predicament but the elites, who at several times Allah has willed leadership,” the forum added.

“The meeting extensively discussed the various circumstances the North is in, and the recent much noised about positions of past Nigerian leaders from the North, i.e. Generals Ibrahim Babangida, Abdusalami Abubakar, Atiku Abubakar, and several others regarding the avoidable quagmire our region is shamelessly trapped into.

“We are at the bottom of every index ranging from health, education, social amenities, and several other sectors.

“Northerners and the world need explanation as to what led the North to the rut it is today. It was not magic but manmade as a result of deliberate manipulation of religion, self enrichment and pervasive corruption our leaders adopted to the detriment of the lager peoples of the North.

“The leaders must be further explained to tell undiluted history, that had our elites continue in the way and direction erected by our leader Sir Ahmadu Bello, it would have been a different ball game, but sadly, our region is now being mocked and laughed upon, we are being denigrated and termed as “parasites” and those “benefiting” from where they do not sown.

“It must also be made clear particularly to the people of Southern Nigeria, that their own elites cannot be exonerated from the mess Nigeria is in today. And they should cease making unnecessary generalization to the north without empirical evidences to support it.”