Don’t Vote President Above 55yrs – Northern Youth Group Tasks Nigerians
By Uangbaoje Alex
Another Northern Youth Group, Arewa Consultative Youth Movement, (ACYM), has urged Nigerians not to vote anybody above 55 years as President of Nigeria from 2023.
Abdullahi Balarebe, Spokesman of the group, made the call at a press conference in on Wednesday.
According to him, “we declare that henceforth we are calling on all Nigerian youths and Nigerians in general never to vote a President of this country who is above 55 years of age. We also declare that a south South person should lead this country come 2023.
“As Northern Youths under the aegis of Arewa Consultative Youth Movement, we have a mission to change the mindset of youths and to rewaken them to the spirit of nationalism and dedication to ways that will bring about peace, progress and development in Nigeria.
“Distinguished Ladies and gentlemen in order to reshape, refocus, reinvigorate our vision to face the future and confront the numerous challenges, we call on all and sundry to heed our clarion call so that we can salvage our frail and ailing Nation called Nigeria.”
He futher said, as the year 2019 gradually comes to an end, it has become very pertinent to address some critical issues bedeviling our Country Nigeria.
“It is obviously clear that our country is in a threshold and the crossroad to which we have found ourselves is very pitiable.
“The issue of insecurity, strangulation of Government work, corruption , disregard for the rule of law, marginalisation, nepotism and the trampling of the fundamental human rights of the ordinary citizen has become the order of the day.
“These anomalies that have stunted our growth as a nation since independence is clearly as a result of misgovernance occasioned by the selection of favoured incompetent persons into the helm of affairs.
“Elections are not free and and the issues of our common interests have been thrown to the dogs.
There is no even distribution amongst the various class of citizens in terms of leadership. This of course has led to the recycling of the “old Order” who continue to plunder our resources.
“Not too long ago, the president signed into law the not too young to run bill, but it is quite unfortunate that only a negligible few young persons have been able to attain leadership positions. This is clearly a case of injustice on the part of the youth of this country.
“We the members of the Arewa consultative Youth movement have followed with interest noting how the leadership of this country has been concentrated in the North for too long.
“Despite the erroneous clinging to power by the Northern elite, issues of religious discrimination and tribal or ethnic sentiments have remained the order of the day.
“The need for us to be introspective and proactive on issues has now warranted us to state clearly without equivocation that we are calling for a return to the South South Presidency. This has now become the central theme of our collective discourse hence and we will continue to clamour for it despite seeming manifestation of tribal configuration that has taken over our value system and caused by bad leadership over the years.”
