The pan-northern socio-political organisation, the Arewa Consultative Forum, and the Niger Delta Youths under the aegis of the Supreme Niger Delta Youths Worldwide met in Kaduna on Thursday with a vow to make Nigeria a united country.

A former Senate President, Dr. Joseph Wayas, who led the group on a courtesy visit to the ACF secretariat in Kaduna, said that despite the current challenges bedeviling the country, Nigeria and Nigerians would remain one.

The former Senate President dismissed any plot from any quarter for the disintegration of Nigeria, noting that the country would remain one and continue to wax stronger.

He described the meeting as a “meeting of brothers,” noting that there was a time in his life that he had “no state to go to than the North.”

According to him, despite the challenges Nigeria is currently grappling with, the country will grow from strength to strength.

He said, ”I am generally emotional when talking on issues that affects the Arewa (North) to the extent that some people don’t believe that I am from somewhere else, especially when it involved people from Lafiya because I was born there in Lafiya. My father was a railway worker and that was the beginning of my mixing with the people of Arewa.

“So, what is happening here is nothing new. It has been happening before and will be so until Nigeria becomes one.”

While responding, the Deputy Chairman of the ACF, Alhaji Liman Kwande, who stood in for the Forum’s Chairman and former Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Coomasie, said the North was committed to the cordial relationship that long existed between the region and the good people of the Niger Delta.

Kwande noted that the ACF, as an umbrella body of the North, believed in Nigeria as one and indivisible entity and pledged the support of the forum to any move that would entrench peace and unity in the country.

He then pledged that the North would fully participate in the proposed Niger Delta Peace Conference slated for Benin, Edo State later in the month.

Meanwhile, the National President of the Supreme Niger Delta Youth Council Worldwide, Prince Michael Newgent, said those parading themselves as the Niger Delta Avengers were nothing but criminals being used by corrupt politicians to cause disaffection among Nigerians.

Newgent said members of his group were not militants but genuine youths that were prepared to follow the enviable footsteps of the former Senate President(Wayas) and his contemporaries to build a strong and an egalitarian society.

He dissociated his group from the Niger Delta Avengers, whom he claimed “are armed robbers, and criminals” and carrying out the biddings of corrupt and failed politicians from the Niger Delta.

Newgent said, We are the real youths of the Niger Delta. Those (Avengers and other militants) bombing oil and gas installations are armed robbers. They are carrying out the biddings of failed and corrupt politicians. We are behind our father (Wayas) who had no records of corrupt charges before.”

The pan-northern socio-political organisation, the Arewa Consultative Forum, and the Niger Delta Youths under the aegis of the Supreme Niger Delta Youths Worldwide met in Kaduna on Thursday with a vow to make Nigeria a united country.

gidgiddy:
Supreme Niger-Delta youths worldwide? The way this people come up with names for non-existent organisations is incredible.

FriendChoice:


http://punchng.com/ndelta-youths-acf-meet-say-nigerias-unity-not-negotiable/