Atiku is not North’s preferred presidential candidate, youths tackle ex-VP

Northern youths under the aegis of the New Northern Initiative for Growth have disagreed with the Arewa Consultative Forum over the alleged adoption of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar as its preferred contender for the 2023 elections.

The political pressure group, while addressing the journalists on Tuesday in Bauchi, warned the ACF from endorsing any of the candidates, saying further that doing so might jeopardize the interest of the region.

The National President of the Initiative, Lawal Sahabi in his speech read by the Bauchi State Chairman, Alkasim Abdulkadir said that: “We wish to use this opportunity to reply to suggestions making the rounds that Atiku Abubakar is behind recent moves by some elements of the Arewa Consultative Forum and Northern Elders Forum to endorse him as the single candidate of the region for the 2023 presidency.

“We use the opportunity to ask the so-called elders to explain to northerners where they derived their mandate to impose a single candidate on the entire region. We also challenge them to explain what criteria they used to arrive at Atiku as consensus candidate for the North and to define his contributions to the growth of the region that qualifies him as such.

“We challenge them to prove they are truly leaders and well-meaning elders of the Northern region by telling the people what Atiku has ever done in the interest of or for the promotion and protection of the well-being of the region and its people.

“By every reasonable assessment, Atiku has never ever had any concern for the North beyond exploiting the region’s resources, its goodwill for his personal political capital.

“Atiku who has risen on the goodwill of the northerners can today not boast of any development project he has ever influenced personally or through the high offices he has held, courtesy the North.

“It is in his blind desperation to secure the presidency that Atiku is sponsoring capitalist northern leaders with no record of achieving anything for the region to manipulate the conscience of the northerner into believing that lies that he is a true northerner with good intentions for the region whereas the opposite is the case.

He said further that supporting Atiku as soul northern candidate on the basis of sentiments would put the region out of political circulation permanently which is what the so called northern leaders out of desperate greed for self-perpetuation are opting for.

“The capital minded northern elders are so blinded by their acquisitive tendencies around ripping the nation with Atiku’s main agenda for privatizing major public assets.

“It is important for the people of the North to refuse to be drawn into the lost battle of pitching all its eggs in one basket, especially since Atiku’s antecedents of non-performance throughout his tenure as vice president have made him unreliable and a major risk for the North to take.”