Leader of a coalition of Arewa youth groups that gave Igbo in the North October 1 deadline to vacate the region, Yerima Shettima has stated that the idea behind the quit notice is working perfectly.
According to him, the groups decided to come with the quit notice to make leaders in the Southeast sit up and tell Nigerians their position in the call for separation by leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu.
He said right now, Igbo elders and youth leaders had maintained they want to stay in Nigeria, denouncing Biafra, which according to him, was the main purpose of the quit notice.
Shettima who spoke with Sun said, “To God be the glory you can see that after this madness of quit notice everybody sat up.
“For the first time, we saw the governors being compelled to come forward to say look we are not part of Biafra, we do not believe in Biafra.
“That is a plus to Nigeria. On the issue of organization, such as Ohaneze, the Ohaneze Youth Council met with us three days ago and told us they don’t believe in the Biafra struggle.
“‘We are Nigerians and we believe in a country called Nigeria and we want to be part of it but we are thinking of restructuring.’
“That is a plus to Nigeria. To me ordinarily we would have been honoured for what we did. It should have been celebrated as a nation that there is that awakening of consciousness in our country.
“The government on their part sat up under the leadership of the Acting President. You could see meetings going on to save the country. We want the country to remain together and on that note we will be making adjustment.
“Based on the meeting of the south east governors, jointly with Ohaneze and other organizations, even before the Ohaneze Youth Council met us, I said we will review our position on the quit notice and we are working on that.”