The Transformation Agenda Solidarity Forum, TASOF, on Wednesday dismissed the alleged opposition of the Northern Elders Forum and the Arewa Consultative Forum to the re-election bid of President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015, saying their view was not representative of the entire northern people.
The group, led by a former Chairman of the Federal Character Commission, Alhaji Muhhamadu Gwaska, said this at a press conference in Abuja.
Gwaska described an anti-Jonathan re-election statement credited to NEF as “unguarded”, adding that both the ACF and NEF lacked the mandate to speak for the North.
Describing TASOF as a promoter of Jonathan’s re-election bid in 2015, Gwaska said northerners would not require “agent provocateurs” to think for them.
His words: “As a group with strong membership of distinguished northerners, TSAOF wishes to categorically repudiate the statements and actions of the so called ACF or NEF and that they do not have the mandate of the North to speak for the North.
“They are on their own and are motivated by narrow and parochial interest. Northerners have their own minds and do not need agent provocateurs to think for them”.
According to TASOF, the so-called elders were only pretending to speak for the North, when in the real sense they had contributed to the region’s stagnation.
“TSAOF has noted wit revulsion the unguarded utterances of some mischief makers who masquerade as northern elders and pretend to speak for the entire North regarding the political future of this country.
“In a publicised statement credited to a group known as Northern Elders Forum and signed by Prof. Ango Abdullahi, the group alluded to what they called ‘decision by the North to stop Joanthan’s reelection’ come 2015.
“It is ironical that the same men whose politics, practices, actions and inactions over the years, contributed in no small measure to stagnate the progress of the North are now heating up the polity with their false sense of Messiah”, Gwaska said.
The group lauded the Jonathan administration for its “various life-changing projects and programmes he (Jonathan) had cited in the region”.
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