Arewa Youth Assembly sacks speaker, splits over smear campaign against Emefiele

Arewa Youth Assembly on Thursday splits over smear campaign against the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele.

The Assembly has also sacked its Speaker, Mohammed Salihu Danlami, over attack on President Muhammadu Buhari’s economic agenda and tenure extension.

Recall that the Speaker of the group, Danlami, in a statement had insisted that Emefiele has option of voluntary resignation from office in view of the nation’s economic woes orchestrated by his incompetence.

He had said: “We stand firmly by our words at the Arewa Youth Assembly in asking Mr Emefiele to resign his post as the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.”

The Arewa Youth Assembly, which appointed a new Speaker, added that the former Speaker, Danlami maligned the person and office of the CBN Central Bank Governor and also threatening National security and the economy of Nigeria with possible breakdown of law and order.

Addressing newsmen Thursday in Abuja, the new Speaker, Tahir Muhammad Azare explained that Danlami, despite resolution of the leadership of the Assembly not to use the platform for devious political plots went ahead to use the name of the Assembly to threaten national security and the economy of the country.

The group had said: “We had asked ourselves, which Emefiele is Mr. Salihu Danlami talking about? Is it the CBN Governor who deployed over N756 billion to 3.7 million farmers cultivating over 4.6 million hectares of farmland under the Anchor Borrowers Programme? Or was it the same man who provided N23 billion in relief materials to Covid19 affected households and set up 39 Isolation Centres across Nigeria?

“We advised him and his patrons to look elsewhere for a new target as Emefiele was a wrong target because he is not the cause of their poverty of ideas and take their fake news of Emefiele’s presidential ambition somewhere else.

“We have since reliably gathered that the smear campaign against Emefiele was being sponsored by some faceless prominent Nigerians who want to have their cronies in charge of the apex bank so that they can continue to loot the nation’s treasury unabated and to use funds from the bank to bankroll their vaulted political ambitions.

“As a responsible youth organization, we find it ridiculous, shameful and embarrassing that Salihu Danlami can drag the good name of our group into this mess.

“No wonder Salihu has refused to hand over as the Speaker of our dear organization in the past seven years that he led the Assembly until he was disgraced out few days ago. It is clear that his desperation to remain in power is just to continue to use the name of the group to carry out nefarious activities to feather his nest.”

To salvage what is left of this organization’s pride and honour, Azare said that the Arewa Youth Assembly resolved to Impeach and sack Salihu “as our Speaker with immediate effect, expel him from the Assembly and appointed a new Speaker.”

The Assembly, has, however, urged members of the public to beware of any information that comes from Salihu Danlami as such statements do not come from the Assembly and do not represent their views about the country, the CBN, the nation’s economy and President Buhari’s government’s economic agenda.

The Assembly said it has also written to the relevant security agencies to invite Mr. Salihu for questioning to unravel the extent of the nefarious activities against the country.