2023: Northern Youths Reject Atiku As Consensus Candidate

The New Northern Initiative for Growth, a group of youths in the north has rejected plan by the Arewa Consultative Forum to announce Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Part, PDP, as it’s candidate for next year’s election.

It has also warned the forum against endorsing any other presidential candidate as its choice.

The group was responding to allegation that the forum has endorsed Atiku, a former vice president as it’s preferred candidate for the crucial election.

Recall that the Presidential candidate of the NNPP, Rabiu Kwakwanso had alleged of plot by the forum to endorse Atiku among other candidates.

Kwakwanso, a former minister of Defense warned that the north will be polarize if the forum went ahead to announce the PDP candidate as its choice.

But the youths said the plan will backfire.

Lawal Sahab, the National President of the group said in Bauchi while addressing journalists that a presidential candidate should not be endorsed based on sentiment.

He explained that what ACF is trying to do is to ensure that power remains in the north after President Muhammadu Buhari leaves office.

“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,” Sahab said.

“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 a consensus candidate for the North and to define his contributions to the growth of the region that qualifies him as such.

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

“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,” he said.

ACF and other groups from the north have been meeting with top presidential candidate, to explain their plans for the country.