Arewa Youth Consultative Forum warns Tinubu to stop attacking northern leaders as 2023 approaches

AREWA Youth Consultative Forum (AYCF) officials have warned All Progressives Congress (APC) national leader Asiwaju Tinubu to desist from attacking senate president Bukola Saraki and House of Representatives speaker Yakubu Dogara as well as other northern leaders.

Over the last few weeks, the political temperature in Nigeria has risen as the jockeying for leadership positions in the National Assembly heats up. On may 29, the ninth National Assembly and the ruling APC is currently in turmoil as it tries to get its elected lawmakers to agree on consensus candidates for the positions of senate president, speaker and their deputies.

Senator Saraki and Hon Dogara had both left the APC last year for the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) but still have considerable clout and are looking to influence the choice of who succeeds them. Last week, Asiwaju Tinubu attacked both of them for being obstructive, saying that they delayed the passage of important bills in the National Assembly and prevented the Buhari administration from achieving many of its goals.

In response to Asiwaju Tinubu's comments, the AYCF has cautioned him and other southwest politicians against taking their northern counterpart for granted. After an emergency meeting in Kaduna, the AYCF said it needed to caution self-righteous politicians like Asiwaju Tinubu to end the culture of disparaging respected political leaders from other regions and undue meddlesomeness in the democratic system.

AYCF Alhaji Yerima Shettima, said Asiwaju Tinubu and southwest politicians should be grateful for taking all sorts of advantages in the Buhari government, especially juicy appointments. He added that Asiwaju Tinubu and his cronies were also getting the bulk of lucrative federal government projects in the southwest.

Alhaji Shettima said: “Let Chief Bola Tinubu bear in mind that gone are the days when any southwest politician would take northerners for granted. It is unacceptable that Tinubu will publicly insult illustrious sons of the north like the senate president and speaker of the National Assembly because we are proud of both of them.

”Someone should tell Chief Tinubu that he cannot foist his political calculations on northerners because 2023 will still be the north’s chance to heal the wounds inflicted on it by Tinubu and his associates through the back door, using the present administration. We in the north are not boys scouts to be pushed around by Tinubu for the sake of a 2023 agenda that is already dead on arrival because power will still remain in the north as this not a hereditary democracy and no one has the power to lord it over anyone.”