You cannot retain your deputy as running mate, the Borno IDPS & youths protest against Shettima's Move.

Thousands of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) taking refuge at various camps as well as Youths from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday jointly took to the streets of Maiduguri, the Borno State capital in a peaceful protest against governor Kashim Shettima’s plan to pick his Deputy, Zannah Umar Mustapha as running mate in the upcoming 2015 general elections in the state.

This is even as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has expressed fears that over 740,000 persons, mainly from the North-East, may not be able to exercise their voting rights during the 2015 elections. Continue...

The region is currently being ravaged through the insurgency of the Boko Haram sect, in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states.

However, Mallam Salisu Durum Kanya who is a committee member on refugees from Damboa Local Government Area, led the IDPs, while the Chairman of Borno Youths Forum, Alhaji Bala Ngulim also led APC youths to the party’s secretariat in Maiduguri during the joint protest.

The protesters, who carried placards, with different inscriptions such as ‘We don’t want Umar Zannah as Deputy governor Again'; ‘Zannah is Selfish'; ‘we need Honourable Usman Durkwa to Be Shettima’s running Mate in 2015′ among others, also chanted anti-party slogans, and vowed to cast their votes to other opposition parties should Shettima refuse to change his mind.

Addressing newsmen after the peaceful protest, Mallam Durum Kanya, who spoke on behalf of other protesting IDPs alleged that since the sacking of many communities by Boko Haram insurgents, the Deputy Governor had not identified with the hardship faced by the IDPs, who were currently taking refuge at different camps in Maiduguri, while Usman Durkwa was not only a regular visitor to the camps but had also donated many bulls, assorted bags of food items, relief materials and cash to the displaced persons in the state.

Durum Kanya also said that Durkwa’s personal residential house in Polo area of the metropolis had always been a site of IDPs to many women and children who had always converged to seek for medical and health assistances and other economic problems faced by individual homes on daily basis.

Durum Kanya alleged that “as a Committee member of the IDPs from Damboa, there is no a time the Deputy governor personally donated food items to any of the IDPs in Borno state, but Honourable Durkwa has done a lot of assistance to refugees and I see no reason we cannot support him to become our Deputy governor on the APC platform”.

Likewise, the APC youth Forum Chairman, Alhaji Ngulim in his separate remark told newsmen in an interview that they decided to stage the protest to press home their demand for considering Durkwa to be the next Deputy governor, as according to him, Durkwa had apart from assisting orphans, widows and the less- privileged in the society, also empowered many youths economically in addition to the sponsorship of many students undergoing studies at different institutions of higher learning, while the present Deputy Governor, Zannah had allegedly not empowered any youth from 2011 to date.

He, therefore, called on governor Shettima to have a re-think, drop his Deputy (Umar Zannah) with immediate effect and replace him with Honourable Durkwa if truly APC needed their support and massive votes in the upcoming general elections in the state.