President Buhari’s appointments and the federal character concept By Femi Orebe

Not since Abacha has the North so completely dominated all the three arms of the Nigerian government.

The amalgamation, by fiat, of the Southern  and Northern parts of Nigeria was done based largely  on  a 1914 letter from Lord Lugard to the Secretary of State for the Colonies part of which read as follows: “For some time it has been realised that the total isolation of the North from the South cannot continue indefinitely. The North has no access to the sea except through the South. Its revenue is insufficient to maintain its administration and deficits have to be met by annual grants from the South and the imperial treasury. It is expected that the unification of the North and South would relieve the imperial treasury of the necessity of making such yearly contributions”.

The amalgamation consummated, it became inevitable that genuine efforts be made to ensure that no part of the country is left behind. These efforts finally culminated in what  is known  as the  Federal Character Concept which, by “virtue of the provisions of the Third Schedule, Part I-C paragraph 8(1) of the 1999 Constitution, is to give effect to section 14 (3) and (4) of the Constitution which states that the composition of the government of the federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the Federal Character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few states or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that government  or in any of its agencies.”

Given Nigeria’s multi-ethnicity, therefore, this is a constitutional provision no Head of State, who wants to succeed, will treat with levity.

Unfortunately, these provisions have been observed mostly in the breach especially in federal ministries and agencies. For instance, I weighed in on this same subject on an occasion when INEC was becoming something of a Northern fiefdom. In: WHAT GAME IS THE NORTH UP TO  AT INEC? ,The NationSeptember 23, 2012, I wrote: “Can Professor Jega, a celebrated academic and former University Vice-Chancellor, double as an ethnic bigot?  Is the ‘famous’ Professor Oba, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, working in tandem with Jega in his historic role  of a northern irredentist? Or is it as simple as the Federal Character Commission becoming comatose or completely blind and toothless wherever in the Nigerian polity the North wields an unfair advantage?”  To his eternal credit, Professor Jega subsequently effected some changes though not in the appointments which had become a ‘fait accompli, but in the membership of key INEC committees which were strategically put under the control of directors of Northern extraction.

That ethnic control of federal agencies was one of the shenanigans Nigerians believed they would see discontinued in Buhari’s CHANGE administration .Unfortunately, we are daily seeing evidences of more of the same. So unfair, and very rampant has it become that I have come to the conclusion  that those around the President are not  being  honest  in letting him have the  feed backs  arising from his appointments  most of which have gone to the North with hardly any consideration for the Southern part of the country. It started with his earliest appointments  of  those generally referred to as  his kitchen cabinet  which many Nigerians believe  can very easily  conduct  its business in the  Hausa language.

However, if those around the President have decided to cocoon him, barring him from hearing  negative  comments, I have no doubt, whatever, of my having personally  earned the right to tell the President the truth. This is because, long before his party’s  Presidential primaries  which he won, I have cast my lot with contestant Buhari and was so gun ho in my support for him that Professor Tam David West,  his  very good friend and supporter , readily quoted me where I had written in an article that “Nigeria needed Buhari more than he needs Nigeria”. I did not limit my support for him to my own views only but went further to quote from my readers’ responses; views that were very supportive of his candidature.  I am sure I won him, not a few Nigerians who ended up voting for him at the election proper.

While I am impressed with his anti- corruption war which, amongst other things, has exposed the Nigerian army as an institution far worse now than when it was described, by its one time Chief of Army staff, as an army of anything goes, the President has hugely disappointed with his very insular, North-centric appointments.  Or could it be a benign disrespect for the South  as alleged by those who claimed that the President is on record as  saying  that he should not be expected to treat Southerners who voted him 5% the same way as Northerners who voted him 95 %? I can only hope that this is more than a fabrication. His appointments are so unerringly disdainful of   the South that  one begins to think  that the President has been captured by a cabal – a Katsina Mafia – as Dr Junaid Mohammed  suggests, who is dictating who to appoint to where.

Much as I hate the comparison, these appointments very uncannily mirror what we had during the reign of the goggled general when  you  couldn’t  name  four  Southerners in  the topmost  20  positions in the country. It is extremely sad that we could have in Buhari’s administration, anything  that bears this striking similarity to what  operated  under  Abacha.  It will cheapen this column to start listing the many appointments that are circulating in the social media, all going to Northerners as if the Federal Character Commission and the law setting it up have been abrogated. And the silence, from the Presidency to the allegations goes a long way to confirm their truism.  I will be very surprised if  the otherwise hardworking pair of  the President’s  spokespersons  can, in all honesty, claim not  to have read the NIGERIAN VILLAGE SQUARE, where it quoted TheNiche’ interview with Dr Junaid Mohammed, a one time supporter of President Buhari, wherein he  said, inter alia: “Muhammadu Buhari’s relatives are the ones dictating policy in Aso Rock for 170 million Nigerians,  thus  adding nepotism to the festering allegation of narrow mindedness levelled against the president who critics say surrounds himself with Northerners in running national affairs”. This is not one allegation in which silence will be golden because Mohammed went on to name at least seven relatives of the president who are the power behind the throne in the Villa – this in addition to the heads of ALL vital security agencies who are from the North.  Dr Mohammed did not shy away from naming them  and  describing their blood relationship  with the President. He even went further to say that two of these seven are already plotting the ouster of the Acting chairman of EFCC for touching somebody  they consider  a sacred cow. I sincerely hope they won’t dare Nigerians who are still largely supporting the President because they know he did not cause their suffering.

A troubling consequence of these appointments is that whether in the Executive, the legislature or the judiciary, the dominance of  the North is so overwhelming  and  unmistakable.  Their conquest of the leadership of the judiciary is such that a Southerner can hardly be appointed the Chief Justice of the Federation in the next twenty years and that will be in addition to decades of their complete domination. Not since Abacha has the North so completely dominated all the three arms of the Nigerian government.  I have heard not a few Yoruba  say  that  we have been sold  cheap to the North and much as  I reply by saying that  we were  divinely sent  to save Nigeria  from President  Jonathan’s brood of kleptomaniacs ,  I think  I must say that  President Buhari  owes  those of us who literally carried him on our heads, even when all we relied upon was his integrity,  an obligation to  govern fairly  and with due  respect to all parts of the country.  That is the only way he can have a lasting positive legacy.  We, in turn, owe him a duty of  always reminding  him  that   the Federal Character provision has  not  been  edited out of the Nigerian constitution.