The Northern Youth Leaders’ Forum (NYLF), has warned the Nigerian Police to desist from arresting those who were signatories to the quit notice on Igbos living in the North.
According to them, the nation would boil if the Inspector-General of Police goes ahead, as he had been directed, to arrest the Arewa Youths.
While speaking to newsmen in Yola, Adamawa State, the National Chairman of the forum, Eliot Afiyo, said any efforts to arrest the youths, will be strongly resisted, calling on Acting President Yemi Osinbajo to call a meeting of youth groups in the country so that the issue will be thrashed out.
“We want to appeal to Federal Government and the Inspector General of Police to withdraw forthwith, the directive to arrest the signatories of the Kaduna declaration. To our opinion, this decision will boomerang as it will only precipitate the crisis beyond control,” he said.
“We believed that our brothers in the south have said more than what our brothers said and they were not arrested. Therefore, no justification for the arrest.”
He added that the Igbos have over the year frustrated them, calling them names like parasites despite the North’s accommodating nature.
“Our Igbo brothers,” he said, “for some years now have been frustrating, insulting and abusing other nationalities especially the northerners calling us cows and parasites despite our efforts in accommodating them.”