I was bombarded with text messages, calls and many agreed with me that the council will not witness peace until a proper election in line with laid down rules and regulations guiding the youth council is held.
As I began writing this piece yesterday (Friday by 4.00 am), the crisis rocking the NYCN following the wicked imposition of its president and other national officers, has not subdued, just as the state governors (with exemption of few) imposed their protégés on its state chapter leadership. President Jonathan using his cabinet member, Inuwa Abdul-Kadir, the Minister for Youth Development and Jude Imagwe, a Special Assistant, has seized virtually all youth organizations including the once vibrant National Association of Nigerian students NANS, with the sole agenda of using them for the 2015 general elections.
If you trace many leadership discords rocking all these youth organs, you will see the imprimatur of those in Aso rock.They have turned many vibrant youth groups to toothless bull dogs that wag tails to any bone coming from them.
What transpired in Markudi was rightly captured by Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the National Publicity Secretary of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), In a press statement dated, June 5th 2013 which part I reproduced below
''…the Presidency's anointed candidate has been named the President of the NYCN even when the body's election did not hold. Are these pointers to the mindset of the PDP/Presidency ahead of the 2015 polls?
"ACN said that the man who has been imposed as the president of NYCN, even though the Council's election was cancelled because of a court order, the Presidency's anointed candidate is a card carrying member of the PDP and an aide to the PDP Chairman Bamangar Tukur.
''The PDP and the Presidency, using the Minister of Youth Development as their arrowhead, orchestrated the movement of the NYCN congress from Ondo to Benue state (a PDP state); the incumbent President of NYCN was invited to the State House in Makurdi where a fat cheque was dangled before him as an inducement to step down for the Presidency's anointed candidate (Tukur's PA) for the NYCN leadership, in accordance with a supposed 'order from above', but he refused.
''However, when some aspirants obtained a court injunction stopping the election, the NYCN trustees advised that the congress should be called off because of the court order. The delegates had hardly departed Benue state when the Minister allegedly started writing the names of selected government candidates as winners of an election that did not hold. The names of the 'winners' were subsequently sent - purely for information sake - to the delegates who had already left after the congress was cancelled.
''The result of the shenanigans orchestrated by the Presidency and the PDP is the crisis now rocking the NYCN, with two persons laying claim to the organization's presidency. This is an uncanny resemblance to what happened to the NGF, again with the Presidency and the PDP being fingered as the culprit,'' the party said.
Inuwa Abdul-Kadir should know that his agenda to capture the council for his pay master will not work. If his so called sanitation of the council has the interest of Nigerian youths, then a fresh election is a must. The Nigerian youths who constitute members of the council that I know, are dodged ,and will not allow its apex body be turned into another arm of the PDP.
http://weekend.peoplesdailyng.com/index.php/opinion/opinion/1309-inuwa-abdul-kadir-and-the-nycn-crisis
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
