NORTHERN ELDERS COUNCIL LAMBASTS ACF OVER ATTACK ON JONATHAN

• ‘Desperate opposition politicians have hijacked its machinery’
THE Northern Elders Council (NEC) Monday condemned what it called outrageous and uncharitable statements made by the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) against President Goodluck Jonathan.
Addressing a press conference in Abuja Monday, Chairman of NEC, Alhaji Tanko Yakasai, who was a foundation member of the ACF, noted that ACF had completely derailed from the mission and vision of its founding fathers.
“We wish to observe that since the emergence of the current leadership of the ACF, there has been a derailment and total non-compliance with the mission and vision of the founding fathers of the forum. A motley crowd of desperate opposition politicians have hijacked its machinery. It is becoming more and more isolationist even within the region and this has greatly degraded the respectability and non-partisanship of the ACF.
“Northern Elders Council regrets totally totally the way and manner the ACF Chairman, Ibrahim Coomasie, addressed the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, in his recent press conference. To say that ‘President Jonathan does not like the North’ is outrageous and uncharitable. And to say that he has failed is untrue.”
According to Yakasai, “NEC received the statement with complete surprise and total bewilderment. The statement attributed to ACF chairman has confirmed the allegations of partisanship and the claim that ACF is hob-knobbing with opposition elements and unrepentant critics of the Jonathan administration.”
The NEC chairman said that Coomasie ought to have cross-checked his facts very well before making public statements on such sensitive issue as security.
“The ACF chairman should have widely consulted with key managers of the security establishment who are eminently Northerners and who are in the frontline in the fight against Boko Haram such as the National Security Adviser, Col. Mohammed Sambo Dasuki (rtd), the Minister of Defence, Gen. Aliyu Gusau, Minister for Special Duties, Alhaji Kabiru Tanimu Turaki and the Inspector General of Police, Suleiman Abba.
“The NEC wishes to affirm that the ACF chairman’s statement in no way represents the general opinion in the North, neither does it represent the attitude of majority of Northern leadership to the Jonathan administration,” Yakasai stressed.
The ACF had challenged former Nigerian leaders from the region
and the current Senate President, David Mark and House of
Representatives Speaker, Alhaji Aminu Tambuwwal to hold President Jonathan responsible for the unabated security challenge in
the north, as they pledged to devise internal mechanism to secure the
lives of northerners against insurgency.
They also blamed the President for the poverty and neglect they claimed the north has suffered under the present administration. They urged
former leaders of Nigeria and current National Assembly leadership from the north to rise up to their responsibility in salvaging the north from the present decay.
In a statement issued yesterday, after the emergency of all northern
groups, called by the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), the northern elders said that it was time for the north to defend itself against
the security challenge facing its people.
Source: Guardian