{"id":395596,"date":"2021-09-20T20:15:40","date_gmt":"2021-09-20T19:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=395596"},"modified":"2021-09-20T20:22:50","modified_gmt":"2021-09-20T19:22:50","slug":"2023-presidency-niger-delta-activist-israel-joe-replies-northern-elders-backs-southern-governors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=395596","title":{"rendered":"2023 Presidency: Niger Delta Activist, Israel Joe replies Northern elders, backs Southern governors"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"mvp-content-main\">Youths in the South-South Region of Nigeria today reacted to a statement credited to the Northern Elders Forum wherein it allegedly said the Northern region must continue to rule Nigeria.<\/p>\n<p>This is contained in a statement signed by a Niger Delta Activist, Comrade Israel Joe on behalf of the South-South Youths.<\/p>\n<p>It would be recalled that the Director of Publicity and Advocacy of Northern Elders Forum, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed had said the North must continue to rule Nigeria during a lecture he delivered on Saturday 18th of September at a series organized by the student wing of Coalition of Northern Group in the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.<\/p>\n<p>The Northern Elders Forum\u2019s spokesman also claimed that Northerners are the owners of Nigeria while placing discontentment on the position of the Southern governors\u2019 forum on their agitations to produce the next president.<\/p>\n<p>He said Northerners are first-class citizens and would not accept the second fiddle.<\/p>\n<p>In a swift response to the comments by Ahmed Baba, Comrade Joe said the utterances speak poorly of such a highly placed northern elder.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe stand to back the position of the Southern governors that the South should produce the Next President.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat election can the North win alone without the input of any Southern region? It is important to state that Southern Nigeria would never also play a second fiddle in the next election.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While outlining the defects of a federal system in terms of majority domination, Joe said, \u201cthe north should be conscious also that Southern Nigeria has a monopoly of the Nigerian economy and once the north is tired of the marriage done by Lord Lugard in 1914, they can ask for a memorandum and national conference to determine the fate of the union.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He said, \u201cFor sake of equity and trust, we urge the northern political class to refrain from heating the polity as the youths of Southern Nigeria are well prepared to defend the region once we sense domination in the 2023 politicking.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Youths in the South-South Region of Nigeria today reacted to a statement credited to the Northern Elders Forum wherein it allegedly said the Northern region must continue to rule Nigeria. This is contained in a statement signed by a Niger Delta Activist, Comrade Israel Joe on behalf of the South-South Youths. It would be recalled [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":395597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[2658,1493],"class_list":["post-395596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-more","tag-a","tag-niger-delta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=395596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/395597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=395596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=395596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=395596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}