Coalition Of Igbo, Northern Youths Warn Northern Elders Over Ihejirika

Ihejirika-COAS-298x295A coalition of Northern and Igbo youths has flayed the Northern Elders Forum for threatening to drag immediate past Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Azubuike Ihejirika before the International Criminal Court (ICC).

It cautioned the elders against sowing the seeds of hatred, division and mistrust in the young generation.

Addressing a joint press conference in Abuja, the nation’s capital, presidents of the Ohanaeze Ndi-Igbo Youth Organisation, Comrade Uzoh Ifeanyi and Northern Youth Leaders Assembly, Comrade Tijani Kabiru Mohammed, said the northern elders were seeking cheap media publicity and looking for the spoils of the political economy of their self-made crisis.

They said the feeling among Igbo youths was that the North could still not imagine that an Igbo man could head the Army, while northern youths were given the impression that an Igbo man commanded a troop to kill northerners.

“We the northern and Igbo youths have built bridges of fraternity and friendship and do not want anybody to lead us back to the hatred and bitterness of the civil war era.

“As Nigerians, we are united in search of a solution to our national challenges. It could be suffocating when wisdom vanishes from the heads of elders.

“We, the youth, have a duty to tell them that they are wrong and should stop. The country is yet to recover from the threats issued by some of them in 2011. We can hardly afford another crisis”, the youths said.

They condemned attempt by the elders forum to create tension, disunity, instability and hatred, urging them to stop inciting Nigerians against one another.