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From Femi Folaranmi, Yenagoa
The Ijaw Youth Council, IYC Worldwide has declared that it would only back presidential candidates that prioritise Niger Delta issues during the 2023 presidential election.
The spokesman of the council, Ebilade Ekerefe who stated this in Yenagoa , Bayelsa State said irrespective of the zone of the presidential candidate, Ijaw youths would queue behind a candidate that has plans for the Niger Delta.
According to the IYC spokesman, the people of the region are less concerned with the zone that will produce the next president but more concerned with the candidate that will provide solutions to the Nigerian question and address the issues of the Niger Delta in particular like the late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua.
“Nigeria is a pluralistic country and you cannot take away ethnicity out of our body politics because of the various ethnic nationalities making up the country and so if the North has gotten its fair share, the South should also have its fair share but beyond the principle of zoning, our concern as a people is a leader that will be able to unite the country and restore hope, provide employment, eradicate corruption and fight insecurity headlong.
“For us, that is the kind of president we are looking at, a president that will put the Niger Delta as a major priority like late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua did with his Seven Points Agenda. The Niger Delta was a top cardinal point of his agenda and we saw what happened,” he said.
Erekefe who noted that the IYC has been on the front burner in agitating for a restructured Nigeria that will reflect the true principles of fiscal federalism said the IYC is looking for a presidential candidate that has a strategic roadmap on how the Niger Delta region will be clean up, and restore the lost hope of our people.
On the clamour for Ijaw governors in Delta and Rivers States, the IYC spokesman called on the other ethnic groups in the two states to give the Ijaws the opportunity to govern over the affairs of the two states in view of the fact that they are yet to governed the states despite their contributions to the socio-economic and political developments in the two states.
“Our position is clear that the Ijaws in Rivers and Delta States have contributed so much to the socio-economic and political developments of these states and since the Fourth Republic these our people have not been given the opportunity to superintend over the affairs of these states and therefore we used the opportunity to call on other ethnic groups in Rivers and Delta States to give an Ijaw man the opportunity to govern these States considering the contributions of our people in these two sister states,” he stated.
