Northern youths under the auspices of the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum (AYCF) have cautioned the South-West geo-political zone against dictating who would be presented as  presidential candidate of the North in the 2019 general elections.

In a statement issued on Sunday, the National President of AYCF, Alhaji Yerima Shettima vowed that the North would resist the antics of some political figures in the South-West to determine the candidate of the North despite better available options, just like it did by imposing President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015.

“We have noticed that gradually Nigeria is being pushed back to the political scenario of 2015 where the South West dominated the decision- making process on who should be the nation’s president and the region out of modesty, merely allowed that historic imposition.

“But we have come to realize the fact that the first four years of the Buhari administration are replete with poverty, hunger, unemployment, general under-development and disturbing levels of stagnation,” the statement read in part.

Shettima maintained that the youths in the North would no longer tolerate the kind of “imposition that has brought the nation’s economy to its knees and all we now get is empty propaganda instead of performance”.

“The false hopes,” the forum asserted, were an insult on the sensibilities of Nigerians who fought fervently for the termination of military rule and enthronement of the democracy the country currently enjoys.

“Even though the consensus is that power should reside in the North in 2019, we make bold to say no one should dare try to teleguide the region and its people this time around.

“Northerners have a right to their democratic aspirations and choice of a president. No one should try to usurp that constitutional power through the backdoor. We want to make it very clear that the era of imposition of anyone on the North is gone.

“We are watching, and very closely too, the turn of events on Nigeria’s democratic space at the moment. We won’t take any form of manipulation by people who know little or nothing about the kind of leadership the people of the North wants,” he added.