The Yoruba Council of Youths Worldwide (YCYW), an umbrella body of Yoruba youths, has berated Alhaji Yerima Shettima, president of Arewa Youths Consultative Forum, for insisting that the north should retain power in 2023.
The Witness had reported that Shettima, in an interview, ditched the idea of zoning, maintaining that power must remain in the north when President Muhammadu Buhari completes his tenure in 2023.
But responding to his remarks, Bar Oladotun Hassan, president of YCYW in a statement made available to The Witness on Monday, described the Arewa youth leader as being greedy and undemocratic in his disposition.
Hassan said the Yoruba youth group has “watched with keen interest and come to a conclusion that the interview granted by Alh. Yerima Shettima on 12th March, 2022 to Sun Newspaper during which he made outbursts against the clamour for 2023 Southern Presidency is a totally undemocratic to say the least.”
Hassan advised that, “as youth leaders, we should maintain decorum and intellectual candour in our approach to delicate issues, especially when it comes to who takes over the mantle of leadership from President Muhammadu Buhari come 12th June, 2023.”
The youth leader insisted that by 2023, the north would have served out its two terms, even as he argued that the region has dominated power in the country since independence, hence power should shift back to the south.
He said years of military rule gave the north “overbearing influence and the mentality of they are born to rule, via clanish and fallacious attacks, as well as deceitful horse-trading.”
He noted that, “In 2015 President Muhammadu Buhari pleaded with Asiwaju Bola Tinubu for support,” arguing that it is turn for “reciprocity,” while declaring that “nobody is more Nigerian than the other.”
He stated further that, “Our position is predicated on the fact that merit and justice must be strictly adhered to as it is written in our Constitution that ‘n the absence or death of the President the Vice President automatically takes over’ which was only an act of God, but regrettably Alh Yerima left common sense and reasoning and started vilifying the South because former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.”
Hassan said its unreasonable for Shettima to argue that Jonathan “should have withdrawn from serving the complete term of his boss when both ran on a joint ticket of the PDP, which according him, “consequently I put it to him that we shall not condone further ethnic attacks from any group or persons forthwith.”