Group Urges South East Governors to Ensure Safety of Northerners
John Shiklam in Kaduna
The Arewa Youths Consultative Forum (AYCF) has called on governors of the South-eastern states to ensure the safety of lives and property of northerners in their communities.
The call came amid reports of escalating violence in the enforcement of the “sit-at-home” policy by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).
The President of AYCF, Mr. Yerima Shettima, in a statement yesterday in Kaduna condemned “the mindless, unrelenting violent disturbances created by certain interest groups in the South-east, in the form of the agitation for a separate state of Biafra.”
He said that the perpetrators of the violence are relentlessly pursuing an agenda of destruction, hoping to set the entire country and bring about mass killing and suffering of innocent people.
“AYCF is calling for guaranteed protection of the lives and property of Northerners in the entire southeast,” Shettima said.
He said that the AYCF was worried that “often the mindless violence and extremist terrorist actions perpetrated by IPOB and its followers in the South-east resort to the long-practiced tactics of attacks against northerners and agents and symbols of the Federal Government of Nigeria.”
The statement said that the forum was compelled to demand from the South-east governors “action to ensure an environment in which the northerner is safe and secure wherever he chooses to live and work in the South-east, “just as the north is ready to support other Nigerians to benefit from our tolerance and accommodation if they show appropriate respect for the context of their livelihoods.”
Shettima added: “It is in our culture to welcome and live with outsiders, and we must never be tired of reminding other Nigerians that the laws of the land demand that every Nigerian lives and earns his legitimate living in any part of Nigeria without discrimination or molestation.
“The north is very much aware that unlike the previous set of governors of South-eastern states, the current state governors are showing some level of commitment in resisting the terrorist tactics of the IPOB.”
The group commended the “renewed gallantry of troops under President Bola Tinubu to checkmate the maneuvers of all terror outfits in the country.”
