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South-East youth leaders decry quit notice, agitations, say Nigeria under severe threat

By Lawrence Njoku, Enugu
31 July 2017   |   4:21 am
Youth leaders in the South-East have insisted that militancy, secessionist tendencies and menacing threat of Boko Haram, among others, undermining the unity of the country...

Ndigbo

Youth leaders in the South-East have insisted that militancy, secessionist tendencies and menacing threat of Boko Haram, among others, undermining the unity of the country, are caused “by a life of lie” being manifested by Nigerians.

They stated that the recent quit notice issued to Igbo in the North had compounded the development, stressing that national dialogue was imperative to avert disintegration and heal certain wounds inflicted on the people.

At a meeting at the weekend organised by the Nigerian Youth Dialogue Group (NYDG) in Enugu, the youths drawn from religious, academic and socio-cultural organisations, insisted that various challenges confronting the country could have been mitigated if her leaders believed in its continuous existence and shunned deceitful tendencies.

The youths, who deplored the quit notice order, said that rather than ask a major component of the country to return to their region, “we should collectively issue quit order to corruption, electoral malpractices, injustices and social ills so as to have a country we can be proud of.”

Chairman of the group, Gideon Osi Chidiebere, who stated that the country had not been able to contain the challenges from the zones because of insincerity, stressed: “The process of nation-building is impossible without dialogue. This is because individually, we are different and collectively, we are also different.

“Our father land is under severe threat of survival and her only hope of being is in the hands of the youths and this is not surprising as the raw energies needed to build this nation or destroy her is in us.

“Our country needs us now more than ever to stand up and defend her from enemies, especially enemies within that are responsible for the unemployment we have today, the insecurity that is threatening our collective existence, poor standard of living, among others.”

He, however, said that dialogue remained the lubricant for national cohesion and development.

Also, other youth leaders at the meeting, including the Secretary of the dialogue group, Mr. Udoh Victor Nse; the Publicity Secretary and Publisher of Scorecard magazine, Humphrey Onyima; the Leader of South-East faith-based organisations, Mr. Isienyi Boniface and Mr. Temple Chike, harped on the need for the Nigerian youths to rise up and take their destiny in their hands.

Onyima said it was regrettable that the Arewa youths chose to slam such ultimatum on the entire Igbo simply because of the opinion of one Igbo man.

He said rather than give Igbo quit notice, the youths should “talk about quit notice to Boko Haram, that if they don’t leave, the youths will occupy Sambisa Forest and occupy Chad Republic.

“We should be talking about quit notice to corruption, quit notice to electoral malpractices, quit notice to political thuggery and not quit notice to the entire Igbo in their own country because of what one man in the United Kingdom (UK) or in Umuahia said. That’s totally unacceptable,” he said.

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