A Niger Delta Group, Volunteer for Good Governance has lambasted a Northern elder, Mallam Adamu Ciroma over his stance on the extension of emergency rule in Adamawa and Borno. Ciroma had called on President Goodluck Jonathan not to extend the emergency rule in those states.
However the VGG in a statement by its National Coordinator, Chief Denis Otuaro, said Ciroma was not qualified to speak on behalf of the victims of Boko Haram who were youth.
The statement reads, “These elders cannot speak for Nigerian youths anymore. The people that are being killed and the Boko Haram members are youths, so they cannot speak for us. These elders that are speaking today were at the helm of affairs in the last 50 years and they refused to give us development, education rather they gave us religious politics, ethnic politics and poverty, which is tearing the country apart today.
“That is what they gave us all these years. Today, the people that are being killed or Boko Haram members are Nigerian youths and not elders, so we are calling on the Federal Government to re-strategise and extend the state of emergency in these states. The state of emergency should be extended because Nigerian youths are being killed.
“With this, we are even suspicious about the role of the elders in the carnage in the North. We cannot abandon a part of this country and turn it to Afghanistan, no section of this country will be turned to Pakistan. The Nigerian military, the National Assembly and the Presidency must make sure that they put in place better strategies that will end this war,” it stated.