From Okwe Obi, Abuja
The Joint Action Front of Civil Society Organisations of Nigeria (JFCSON) has claimed that the north has not endorsed the standard bearer of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, as the sole candidate in the February 25 presidential poll.s
JFCSON National President, Barnabas Bala Yock, in a statement, noted that the announcement made by a certain Committee to that effect should be discarded.
Yock claimed that no credible group of concerned northerners or stakeholders was aware of such endorsement or, for that matter, the Northern Committee that made the announcement.
He argued that throughout recorded Northern history, the region has never consciously voted in one direction or deliberately adopted a sole candidate.
“It is important to point out here that to date, none of the competent representative Northern groups such as the Arewa Consultative Forum, the Northern Elders From and other significant credible Youth Associations has announced the endorsement of a sole candidate for the region, preferring to leave it open to individual preferences.
“Such announcements from unknown entities hiding behind mushroom, obscure and unidentifiable groups should therefore be discountenanced.
“It is ridiculous for a group that has never been heard speaking up the North throughout when it was in the stranglehold of dangerous insurgents, rampaging banditry or against the hardships caused by damaging government policies such as the current currency shortage and other conditions that have made life difficult for the northerners to now claim the right to decide the way the North votes.
“As far as the North is concerned and in accordance with the democratic tradition of its people, the region has not adopted or endorsed any of the candidates.
“We, therefore, challenge this group of scavenging impostors to show where they derive the competence to take any decision on behalf of the North.
“We also challenge them to produce the criteria they used in arriving at Atiku in a race that involves two Northern presidential candidates and one vice presidential candidate.
“Finally we wish to categorically restate that the North has not, and will not endorse or adopt a sole candidate for the coming presidential polls.
“We call on Northern voters to come out en masse to freely exercise their individual rights to choose their leaders and to discountenance such pronouncements by paid agents of destabilisation who never cared for the promotion and protection of their interests and have never, and will never be there in their hour of need,” he said.