By Emem Idio

YENAGOA—Spokesman of Ijaw Youth Council, IYC Worldwide, Ebilade Ekerefe, has said that Ijaw youths would only support any presidential candidate that will priotise issues affecting the Niger Delta region irrespective of the zone which the candidate comes from.

IYC spokesman, said the people of the region were less concerned about the zone that would produce the next president but more concerned with the candidate that would provide solutions to the Nigerian question and address the issues of the Niger Delta in particular like the late President Umaru Yar’adua.

Ekerefe, in a chat with newsmen in Yenagoa, yesterday, said: “Nigeria is a pluralistic country and you cannot take away ethnicity out of our body politics because of the various ethnic nationalities that make up the country and so, if the North has gotten its fair share, the South should also have its fair share but beyond the principle of zoning, our concern as a people is a leader that will be able to unite the country and restore hope, provide employment, eradicate corruption and fight insecurity headlong.

“Basically, that is what the Ijaw people and the Niger Delta people are interested in, it is not necessarily on the basis of zoning. What if you zone and the president that emerge through that process does not priotize the issue of the Niger Delta question?

“For us, that is the kind of president we are looking at, a president that will put the Niger Delta as a major priority like late President Yar’Adua did with his Seven Points Agenda. The Niger Delta was a top cardinal point of his agenda and we saw what happened.

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“We are looking at a president that will first priotize the issue of the Niger Delta, the IYC, has been on the front burner in agitating for a restructured Nigeria that will reflect the true principles of fiscal federalism and so if the presidential aspirants are not talking about a restructured country that will devolve power from the centre to the states and local governments, we don’t think the Niger Delta people will want to align with such presidential aspirants.

“If a presidential aspirant is not talking about how Nigeria as a country will be secured with a strategic roadmap, not just rhetoric as we are seeing around, a strategic roadmap of how the country will be secured, a strategic roadmap on how to industrialise the Niger Delta region, a strategic roadmap on how the Niger Delta region will be cleaned up, and restore the lost hope of our people, so what st the point?”

Vanguard News Nigeria