Only Youths Can Facilitate Dialogue With Boko Haram -AYCF

The Arewa Youth Consultative Forum (AYCF) on Friday said that only youth organisations in northern Nigeria could successfully bring the Boko Haram sect into dialogue with the Federal Government.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Senate President, David Mark on Thursday in Abuja challenged the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) to work out a blueprint on how to end the “orgy of violence bedevilling the nation”.

Mark said insecurity in the Northern part of country had assumed a worrisome dimension and called for collaboration between the elders and the government to find solution to the problem.

According to a statement signed by his Chief Press Secretary, Paul Mumeh, Mark said that the violence had put both the government and the governed in a difficult situation.

The Senate President spoke when he received a delegation of ACF Contact and Mobilisation Committee.

Reacting to Mark’s challenge to the ACF, Alhaji Yerrima Shettima, the AYCF President, told NAN that only youth organisations from the North could facilitate the desired dialogue with the Federal Government.

“There are fundamental issues that bother on trust, which is a major factor that requires the youth to be on board in initiating a peace dialogue with the sect.

“This is not to say that a few leaders of repute should not be involved, but the youth are the best strategy to use as intermediaries in the matter,” he said.

According to Shettima, earlier initiatives failed because youths that make up the majority of members of the sect had lost faith in some of the nation’s leaders.

Shettima said the AYCF and other youth organizations from the North had achieved landmark resolutions in the past, in the face-off between the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) and the Arewa People in Lagos, and could do the same with the Boko Haram sect.