The Northern Youths Leaders
Forum, NYLF, has told the presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party,
PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, to dump former Anambra State Governor, Peter Obi,
as his running mate.
The forum said Atiku should
forget about winning the presidential election if he continues with Obi, adding
that the former Vice President will not enjoy the total support of the north.
The forum, which claims to be
speaking the minds of the 46 northern youth organisations, with over six
million members, equally threatened to mobilize massively against the PDP if
Abubakar sticks with Obi as his deputy.
National chairman of the northern
group, Elliot Afiyo made this known in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital on
Tuesday while speaking with reporters.
According to the forum, the NYLF
played a critical role in reconciling former president Olusegun Obasanjo with
Atiku, who was his vice president.
The group, he added, had met with
Obasanjo on Monday night to make its position known on the matter.
The forum further explained that,
apart from the issues that accompanied Obi’s choice in the South East, which,
according to them could lead to the impending defection of Deputy Senate
President Ike Ekweremadu from the PDP, the former Governor is viewed as
anti-North and a major sponsor of Igbo separatist group Indigenous People of
Biafra (IPOB) by northerners
“Atiku is an experienced
politician, and he knows what happened and, as a northern Nigerian, he cannot
ignore the group. I have spoken to almost all the South East governors and they
told me that they remained in the PDP because of their governorship elections
and after their governorship elections they will vote somewhere not PDP,” he
said.
“And for us to ignore those
stakeholders, it is political suicidal; so we must agree with that fact. That
was what we told Obasanjo yesterday – that as far as we want to Atiku to
succeed, he has no alternative than to drop Peter Obi, and with the contention
between Peter Obi’s group and the Ike Ekweremadu group, it is not political
convenient again to pick a running mate from the South East.
Because whichever group you pick
from, the other group will work against them.
“Then, in the North, we consider
Peter Obi as anti-north. This is no sentiment, apart from the way he treated
the northerners when he was the governor of Anambra state, we consider him as a
bonafide member and major sponsor of IPOB.
“In fact, 70 percent of emirs and
traditional rulers from the north will not support Peter Obi as the vice
president.”
Afiyo was of the view that it
would not be politically wise for Atiku to pick his running mate from the South
West which, according to him, remains a strong base of the ruling All
Progressives Congress (APC), advising the PDP to turn its radar instead to the
South South.
The NYLF leader suggested that
either Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike or his Bayelsa State counterpart,
Seriake Dickson, should be considered as Atiku’s prospective running mate, if
the opposition party is serious about unseating President Muhammadu Buhari next
year.
“We don’t work on sentiment. As I
have told you before, our group staked our lives in 2015 for Buhari.
Personally, I was placed under house arrest for two weeks throughout the
extension of the presidential election in 2015. I was fighting with the hope
that Buhari would change things, but there is a cabal and Buhari is completely
caged.
“Also, mind you, Atiku is not a
saint; anyone that becomes president, there must be a cabal. So we need a vice
president that will tell the cabal no and Peter Obi doesn’t have the courage
and boldness to be the vice president to challenge the authorities. We need
checks and balances,” he said warning that “If Atiku fails to heed our warning,
then APC will win. Buhari will win hands down because we cannot support a
failure, we will work for APC.”
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