The Arewa Youth Coalition for Peace (AYCP) has threatened to mobilise Nigerians to boycott the 2019 general elections if the orgy of killings perpetrated nationwide by herdsmen, Boko Haram and other criminal gangs persist.

Consequently, the youths issued a 12-week ultimatum to President Muhammadu Buhari and his team to reverse the trend, noting that anything to the contrary would jeopardise the nation’s country. During a press conference in Kaduna, the chairman of the group, Muktar Muhammad, in company of the secretary, Abdullahi Isa, said they were committed to setting a wide-reaching machinery via protests, civil disobedience and other legitimate means towards ensuring that youths nationwide see reason to boycott the polls or pitch tent with a candidate that could address the issues at hand.

They maintained that the primary role of government was to secure lives and property, adding: “Any government that cannot fulfil this fundamental constitutional obligation has no moral claim to political power not to talk of seeking to remain therein.”Submitting that politicians are powerless without the youths, Muhammad added that the “global community that is watching and will not see this election as participatory if the over 87 million youths in this country don’t cast their ballots.”

•Excerpted from Guarian report