From Noah Ebije, Kaduna
A Northern group, Arewa Youth Assembly for Good Leadership (AYAGL) has told the Federal government to choose between dialoguing with them or allowing them to return to the streets for the ongoing nationwide protest against hunger.
This was even as the group said it is ready to dialogue with the Federal Government by the end of next week to initiate the dialogue process or will be left with no option than to return back to the streets in protest.
Spokesperson of AYAGL, Andul Danbature who is one of the organizers of the protest stated this in a statement shortly after he appeared on a national television to give more insight into the protest and its suspension.
According to him, “We started this movement because we want to express our grievances and anger and the need for the federal government to meet our needs.
“Some of our demands include;, the return back of fuel subsidy, creation of employment opportunities for youths, stoppage of payment to ex governors , relocation of all service Chiefs to North West to address insecurity holistically
dress insecurity holistically and reversal of harsh government policies among several others”.
“We however commended the Federal Government for calling for dialogue which we have agreed to because the peaceful protest which we started has been hijacked by hoodlums which is not part of our plans and that is why we have suspended the protest to take the part of dialogue with the government.
“Our major problem is the removal of fuel subsidy and naira inflation which has affected poor masses and resulted in unemployment. There is no single development on ground that will benefit the poor masses directly, all we know is that money is being released from the federation account to the National Assembly and also to the governors.
“When we started this movement, we sensitize the youths to understand that our major problem is the governors who sit on allocations from the federal government. We also engaged our coordinator at the local government to engage the governors.
“We are ready to dialogue with the Federal government on our demands and we are giving the government between now and next week, in which failure to do so, we will return back to the streets and continue the protest” he stressed.
