Arewa Youth Consultative Forum (AYCF) has berated Professor Itse Sagay for rejecting the 2023 presidential ambition of Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State.
While reacting to Sagay’s claim that the Kogi governor has no records to show to warrant his nursing presidential ambition, AYCF’s National President, Yerima Shettima said Sagay was economical with the truth.
He said: “I am not holding brief for the young Kogi Governor because I know he is capable of defending himself any day, but I am exercising my freedom of expression as a stakeholder of the Nigerian project.
“I think it is quite unfair to make pretentious comments about Kogi State, which is the most peaceful state in the North today”.
The AYCF president also said the world in general and Nigeria, in particular, has come a long way to pay much attention to ideas being propagated by Professor Sagay because “both age and dynamic political thinking may not be in his favour at this stage of his lifetime”.
Yerima said the global trend on the democratic scene has been in favour of mentoring “energetic, new breed of leaders” while the old ones take to advisory role based on their wisdom as elders and not the direct drivers of the democratic system.
The AYCF leader said it was wrong for Professor Sagay to “indulge in subtle condemnation of young and upcoming new generation of Nigeria’s political class.”
He said: “All Nigerians including the people of Kogi State think their governor will be contesting in 2023 based on competence and not because he is Southerner or Northerner unless Sagay thinks we are not practicing democracy but a turn-by-turn political system, which does not even exist in any system of civil governance in today’s world.
“Prof Sagay should respect the processes of electing a leader under a democratic system and perish the thought of undemocratic turn-by-turn contraption.”
He then advised Sagay to visit a popular database known as “Kogipedia” and see a “ blow-by-blow account of all the achievements of the incumbent administration in the areas of health, education, security and infrastructure, before jumping to conclusions”, the AYCF said.
