‘We are also victims of flawed constitution,’ Arewa youths warn Southern leaders against attacks

The President of the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum (AYCF), Alhaji Shettima Yerima, has said that northerners also suffer the consequences of a flawed Nigerian constitution despite insinuations that people from the region benefit more from the country.

Yerima who spoke at a national dialogue on the constitutional future of Nigeria in honour of constitutional lawyer, Prof. Ben Nwabueze, organised by the Patriots, a Pan Nigerian Group of Eminent National Leaders of Thought in Lagos on Monday, however, warned leaders from the southern parts of the country to stop attacking and casting aspersions on the Northern region.

Yerima who gave a keynote address with the theme, “Lawful Procedures for Actualising a People’s Constitution for Nigeria,” said it was worrisome that Southern leaders always cast aspersions on the North at every forum advocating for a change of the present 1999 constitution as if the North is not part of the struggle.

Yerima stressed that contrary to what many Nigerians are made to believe, many Northerners have always been in the trenches calling for the decentralisation of power which is highly concentrated in the centre.

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“I get worried when leaders we are looking up to look at the entire North and cast aspersions on them,” Yerima stated.

“I get worried because the truth of the matter is that we are more victims of this system than some of you in the Southern part of this country but yet if an issue of this nature comes up, the entire North would be looked at and cast aspersions on. This is not right.

“Some of us grew in your midst, we are your students, you mentored us, we were parts of the struggle. So when you don’t look at people like us and you cast aspersions, to an extent, you are saying we are stupid and foolish, that is what we feel. We are all victims.

“I have always been an advocate of this struggle; I have always been an advocate of total decentralization of this system.”

The Arewa youth leader specifically called on the leader of pan-Yoruna socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere, Ayo Adebanjo, and other Southern leaders to desist from constantly attacking the north as if everything was perfect in the region.

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