Atiku hails Igbo quit notice withdrawal

Former vice president and chieftain of All Progressives Congress, Atiku Abubakar, has commended the Northern youth groups for rescinding their quit notice given to people of Igbo origin to leave the northern part of Nigeria by October 1.

Mr. Abubakar, in a statement by his media office in Abuja on Friday, said of the development: “at last, good judgment has prevailed.”

He however appealed to the Coalition of Northern Groups and the Arewa Youths Council to go the whole hog and drop any other condition given to people of Igbo origin living in Northern Nigeria or anywhere else in the nation.

“Reconciliation must be total or else it is Pyrrhic,” Mr. Abubakar said.

“In the spirit of this rapprochement, the Waziri Adamawa also calls on other ethnic groupings that might have issued counter quit notices to accept this olive branch and rescind whatever notices or withdraw whatever statements they may have made,” the press statement said.

The former vice president commended President Muhammadu Buhari for his national broadcast condemning such developments and urged other elders and elder statesmen around the nation to likewise add their voices to the condemnation of evil and “henceforth refrain from making statements that undermine Nigeria’s unity.”

“To keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done, as a great patriot once said,” Mr. Abubakar stressed.