The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has accused the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Presidency of hijacking the National Youth Council of Nigeria (NYCN), the umbrella group for voluntary youth bodies in Nigeria.
The party alleged that they imposed a PDP member as the president of the non-partisan organisation.
In a statement in Abuja yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, ACN noted that this is the way the ruling party has divided the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) for selfish reasons and destroyed many national institutions.
It added that the PDP and the Presidency have also infiltrated the NYCN with the intention of using it for partisan purposes.
The statement reads: “The destructive train of the PDP and the Presidency, which has been targeting national institutions and organisations, has recently rammed into the NYCN, and the outcome is chaos and deep divisions in an otherwise cohesive and non-partisan body.
“In the desperation to seize control of many institutions and organisations, including voluntary groups and professional bodies, as part of their 2015 election strategy, the PDP and the Presidency are sowing the seed of discord and destruction everywhere. Based on available evidence, the crisis currently rocking the NYCN has the imprimatur of the PDP and the Presidency.
“Our concern here is the emerging desperation of the Presidency and the ruling party ahead of the 2015 polls; the do-or-die tendency on the part of this siamese twin of evil and what this bodes for the 2015 elections.
“If these desperate folks are not checked, every value we hold dear will be destroyed in the name of mad politicking.”
ACN alleged that the imposed president of NYCN, even though the council’s election was cancelled because of a court order, is a card-carrying member of the PDP and an aide to the PDP Chairman, Alhaji Bamanga 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 organisation’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,” ACN said.
The party wondered why a government, which has not positively impacted on the people, would be so doggedly pursuing the destruction of such bodies as the NGF and the NYCN.
“The Presidency’s anointed candidate lost the NGF chairmanship election and refused to accept the result. Now 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? Is this why ‘Mr Fix it’ has been ringing the consensus bell so there will be no election? Is this what the PDP/Presidency want to make of our democracy? These and other questions must be agitating the minds of all lovers of democracy as the country inches closer and closer to the 2015 elections,” ACN said.
