Thursday, 10 August 2017
Arewa youths Consultative Forum has distanced itself from the newly released controversial anti-Igbo song recently produced in northern Nigeria, urging security operatives to urgently fish out and prosecute those behind the Hausa hate song.
Reacting to the offensive song, generating angry backlash on the social media, National President of AYCF, Alhaji Yerima Shettima told Orient Daily in an exclusive interview that his organization does not encourage violence but peaceful coexistence.
“The truth is that we don’t know anything about the song. We condemn it out-rightly from the word go because hate song or speech does not have a place in this society.
“And we are using this medium to appeal to the security agencies to fish out those people behind such hate song and bring them to book according to the law. Such hate materials not only constitutes nuisance in our society but are capable of causing mayhems”, Mr. Shettima declared.
According to him, it was his organization’s hatred for hate speech being propagated by the Nnamdi Kanu led Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and silence of Igbo leaders and organizations that forced them to issue a declaration asking federal government to grant the Igbos Biafra by October 1, 2017.
Hear him: “It’s sad that people had misconstrued the good intentions of Arewa youths which is to allow the Igbos and focused on the negatives that we want to chase Igbos away and confiscate their prop-erty. That is not true. There was never such agenda. It’s only a creation of mischief-makers who want to take advantage of the mutual suspicion in the Nigerian society.
Mr. Shettima also condemned what he called too much hype of negative stories through the social media, arguing that the penchant of Nigerians to latch unto every negative reports that have ethnic or religious coloration were causing need-less tensions in the country.
\According to him, many people are focusing so much on neg-ative reports that could cause rifts between Hausas/Fulani ethnic groups and Igbos with-out also highlighting positive steps to foster peaceful coexis- tence of all.
“It’s equally disappointing that the same people on the social media that were busy sharing the hate song done by mischief makers have failed to track and document our ongoing efforts by Arewa youths to ensure that we live in peace as one united country.
They would choose to play up the negative and refuse to equally highlight the positive developments. This is not good for all of us because we need to be circumspect in dealing with issues and things that are capacity.
