Members of the Arewa Consultative Forum are divided over the candidature of President Muhammadu Buhari for the 2019 presidential election.
A leader of the Northern Elders’ Forum, NEF, Prof. Ango Abdullahi, and 17 other northern groups at a summit on Saturday had passed a vote of no confidence in Buhari.
The coalition of Arewa groups had said that the President and other politicians from the region had failed the North.
Abdullahi was the convener of the summit held at the Sir Ahmadu Bello, Arewa House, Kaduna.
Abdullahi, Chairman of the Political Committee of the ACF, and another staunch member of the forum, Ambassador Ibrahim Mai-Sule, signed for the pan-northern socio-political group.
The groups also added that they were in search of a credible candidate to replace Buhari in 2019.
But the ACF on Thursday distanced itself from the members who signed the communique.
The National Publicity Secretary of the ACF, Alhaji Muhammad Biu, in a statement in Kaduna on Thursday, said the northern body had yet to decide on its candidate for the presidential poll in 2019.
It noted that at the appropriate time, the North would tell Nigerians who the forum’s candidate would be.
Biu said, “The attention of the Arewa Consultative Forum has been drawn to the communique of the Northern Groups Summit held at the Arewa House, Kaduna, on Saturday, March 24, 2018, where the ACF was said to be a signatory to the communique.
“For the avoidance of doubt, the ACF would want to state clearly that it was never involved in the preparation nor participated in the said summit of that group and did not mandate any of its members to represent the forum.
“The ACF acknowledges the right of the individuals or groups to freedom of association as enshrined in our constitution. Any member who claimed to have represented the ACF or signed on behalf of the forum did so on his own.”
