Buhari: Ijaw Youths Threaten To Go Back To The Creeks
BEVERLY HILLS, April 02, (THEWILL) – Indications have emerged that agitations in the Niger Delta region may soon begin once the President-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari, assumes office as the radical Ijaw youth group, Ijaw Youth Council (IYC), is currently reviewing the implications of last Saturday's Presidential election.
The group has also announced the convocation of a general Ijaw youth meeting to be held on Sunday at Tuomo Community in Burutu Local Government Area of Delta State. The meeting is to deliberate on the outcome of the election in a bid to renew the agitation for resource control and self determination for the Niger Delta.
In a statement by IYC's spokesman, Barrister Eric Omare, the group said the meeting would reunite all ijaw youths including the founding fathers and leaders of IYC like Asari Dokubo, Chris Ekiyor, Kingsley Kuku among others and brainstorm on the outcome of the election and forge a position.
The statement said that the group reached the decision after an enlarged executive council and consultative meeting, comprising of founders and former leaders of IYC, National and Zonal Executive Council members and key stakeholders, which held at Izon House, Yenagoa, Bayelsa State on Wednesday.
The statement said: “We call on all Ijaw youths to be alert and ready to heed the call to the service of the Ijaw nation at this crucial time of our history and struggle for survival in the Nigerian state in the face of the grand conspiracy between the north and a section of the south west to continue to suppress and exploit the resource of the Ijaw nation.”
The group however recalled that when President Goodluck Jonathan, an Ijaw and from the South South won an internationally acclaimed free, fair and credible election in 2011, General Buhari and his people never at any time congratulated or supported President Jonathan.
“Instead they killed hundreds of innocent Nigerians and fought President Jonathan from the day he became the Acting President of Nigeria in 2010 until the north conspired with a section of the south west to take over the Presidency from President Jonathan and the minorities of the south-south in an election fraught with irregularities,” the statement said.
According to IYC, it is also significant to note that none of the northern socio-cultural groups such as the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and others congratulated or supported the administration of President Jonathan.
IYC accused the North of creating the Boko Haram phenomenon to destabilise President Jonathan's administration and discredit him before 2015 in a grand plot to seize power.
“Northerners created Boko Haram and blamed it on President Jonathan deliberately to incite the northern populace against President Jonathan and make him unpopular in the 2015 election so as to take back power in a grand conspiracy with a section of the south west,” the statement added.