A pro-democracy organization, Youth Advocacy Initiatives (YAI), has expressed exception on the attack directed at the administration of Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State by the President of the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum (AYCF), Mallam Yerima Shettimas alleging marginalization against the Arewa Community in the state.
The group in a statement signed by its leader, Comrade Adekunle Akinde described the attack as a misplaced anger against the wrong person and his team, observing that, Yerima’s anger might have been borne out of vendetta against a lucky member of the Arewa Community in Lagos.
Akinde suspected that the vituperation poured out on Sanwo-Olu, a leader of competently effective team by Yerima must have been as a result of bottled up hatred for how Alhaji Kabiru Ahmed, the Lagos State Honourable Commissioner for Waterfront has been the choice of successive administration in the state.
“Kabiru’s choice as the slot of the Arewa Community in Lagos has punctured Yerima Shettima’s false allegation that the Lagos State government under Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu and his team is marginalising the northern people resident in Lagos State.
“If the state administration has not been holding the Arewa Community in the highest esteem, it would have not deemed it necessary to reserve a frontline ministry for our northern people as a slot to fill,” asserted the youth leader.
Akinde expressed disgust that, somebody, who claims to be a National Leader of a group could stoop so low as to be agonising about mere palliatives instead of how the problem that necessitated the palliatives would be defeated in the country.
According to him, it is shameful that our brother, Yerima who we hold in high esteem would be exsuming a culture of beggary for crumbs that people of goodwill like the respected former Emir of Kano, Lamido Sanusi Lamido are trying to cast into the dustbin of history!
The youth leader regretted that, Yerima could engage in such a shameful conduct against his hospitable host community, observing that he is not speaking for Arewa Community in Lagos state but rather for himself.
“If I was Yerima, I would use my vantage position to approach the administration in a civilised manner to call its attention to some lapses, if there is any in the distribution of the said palliates. Sanwo-Olu that we know, and his team members are listening administrators who attend to the needs of everybody. I would have used several avenues open to the public to get their ears instead of playing to the gallery in the media and making mockery of myself,” Akinde suggested.
The administration that Yerima wants to drag in the mud, the youth leader added has gone beyond campaign of calumny in the war against coronavirus reminding that, both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nation (UN), had given it a pat on the back for a job being well done.
“It is a pity Yerima has not seen anything good in the administration of Sanwo-Olu except mismanaging of palliatives that can never go round everybody. And thankfully enough, all the respectable leaders of Arewa Community are behind Sanwo-Olu and there are evidences that the palliatives Yerima is fighting for, got to their members,” Akinde disclosed.