Hold Confab With Youths Dissatisfied With Nigerian Project – Young APC Leaders Tell Buhari

On a day the Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, is throwing its weight behind President Muhammadu Buhari’s position on restructuring and hate speech, some young members of various Houses of Assembly and Commissioners in All Progressives Congress, APC-controlled states have called on the President to convene a meeting with young people who are dissatisfied with the Nigerian project.
The APC youth leaders, who addressed newsmen in Abuja on Monday, under the aegis of Democratic Youth Congress, DYC, urged Buhari to listen to agitators and forge a way to regain their trust.
Buhari had, in a nationwide broadcast on Monday two days after returning from a 103-day medical vacation in London, quashed the call for restructuring the country, saying the National Assembly and the National Council of State are the legitimate and appropriate bodies for national discourse, stressing that the national consensus had been that it is better to live together than to live apart.
In a statement issued by the ACF National Publicity Secretary, Muhammad Ibrahim Biu, the apex Northern socio-cultural organization agreed with the President that the channels of addressing issues of restructuring and genuine grievances are the legislature and the judiciary.
“The presidential broadcast of today was commendable and all encompassing, especially on the unity and indivisibility of the country. ACF supports the position of Government on the issues of restructuring and the channels of addressing genuine grievances through the appropriate democratic institutions such as the Legislature and Judiciary.
“On the issue of hate speeches and inflammatory remarks, now that Government has taken a decisive action to arrest the situation, ACF appeals to all Nigerians to henceforth heed to the call for restraint and resort to peaceful means of ventilating their grievances.
“ACF further calls on Governments at all levels to step up peace and confidence building in order to douse the current sociopolitical tensions,” the forum said.
Differing a bit, the DYC urged Buhari to hold a meeting with the youth who are dissatisfied with the Nigerian project, asserting that only equity and justice can end the current tensions across the country.
Chairman of the group and member of Nasarawa State House of Assembly, Kassim Mohammed Kassim, who spoke on behalf of DYC members drawn from over 15 states, said: “In order to address the discordant tunes across the country, we call on President Buhari to.
“We urge him (Buhari) to listen to them and forge a way to regain their trust. The youths of this nation are the most important resource the country has.
“Moving forward, we call on the president to give balancing the Nigerian project a solid sense of equity and justice, and call on all those who are in the forefront of the fight for restructuring Nigeria to come up with proposals and blueprints on how to make things better.
“Under president Buhari, we want to see balanced seats in the House of Representatives to make it fair to all. We want to see the resources of this nation shared in such a way that those from the areas where the resources come from do not feel cheated by the rest.
“We Nigerian youths want to see presidency rotated amongst the zones. We want the number of local governments in each zone to be fair so that allocations to each zone would not be lopsided.”