Deputy Leader of the Northern Elders’ Forum, NEF, Paul Unongo has said Igbos are welcomed in the North.
He made the remark while reacting to a statement credited to the spokesperson of NEF, Professor Ango Abdullahi, who backed Northern youths for asking Igbos to vacate the region in three months.
Unongo, in a statement said Abdullahi was speaking for himself and not NEF, and that as such the statement should be disregarded.
NEF deputy leader stressed that the body could not have adopted the position of ignorant youths, who were not there when Nigeria lost three million of its citizens to the civil war.
Unongo maintained that they fought the civil war to keep the country as one united nation.
According to Unongo, “I am the Deputy Leader of the Northern Elders Forum and Ambassador Yusuf Maitama Sule is the leader. So, only the two of us can speak for the forum on sensitive matter like this. Therefore, if Professor Ango Abdullahi is backing those ignorant youths, then he is speaking for himself.
“We cannot support the nonsense those boys said. We fought civil war with our blood to keep Nigeria one. So, any Nigerian can live in any part of the country he feels like. Igbos are welcome in the North, they are welcome in Yoruba land and my own village in Tiv land and they have right to pursue their daily bread and own property.
“We couldn’t have killed three million people to keep Nigeria one and come back and allow these kids (the Northern Youth Groups) to insult our intelligence.
“We knew why we fought the war, we knew why we killed the people we loved. We knew why we made the sacrifice of three million men dead. So, Northern Elders Forum cannot take same position as those young men, if at all they took a position.
“So, if the young men cannot build a nation, they should not destroy the one we put our lives on the line to build for them. We cannot allow young men who did not fight the civil war with us to destroy our country, because Nigeria cannot afford another civil war,” he said.
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